Ulaberfortr  Hiirarg  Hectureg 


THE    RELIGION    OF    AN 
EDUCATED    MAN 


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flaberforti  ILibrarg  ILectures 


THE  RELIGION 


OF 


AN    EDUCATED    MAN 


BY 


FRANCIS    GREENWOOD    PEABODY 

PLUMMER  PROFESSOR  OF  CHRISTIAN   MORALS 
IN   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


^     OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


NebJ  gork 
THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 

1906 

AU  rights  reserved 


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Copyright,  1903, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  November,  1903.    Reprinted 
January,  1904. 

New  edition  September,  1906. 


NortoooU  iPw2g 

J.  S.  Cashing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


J^afterforti  Eibrannj  Eecturw 


From  the  provisions  of  the  donor : 

**  The  money  [;^  10,000]  to  be  kept  safely  invested, 
the  Income  only  to  be  used  for  an  annual  course  or 
series  of  lectures  before  the  senior  class  of  the  College 
and  other  students,  on  the  Bible,  its  history  and  its 
literature,  and,  as  way  may  open  for  it,  upon  its  doc- 
trine and  its  teaching.** 


">vT>4 


THREE   LECTURES 
To  THE  Students  of  Haverford   College 


I.     Religion  as  Education. 
II.     The  Message  of  Christ  to  the  Scholar. 
III.     Knowledge  and  Service. 


I.  RELIGION  AS  EDUCATION 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 

I.  RELIGION^nSBuCATION 

MEET  you  in  the  happy- 
companionship  of  the  aca- 
demic life,  as  sharers  of 
the  ideals  of  educated  men. 
I  meet  you  also  in  the 
larger  fellowship  of  the 
religious  life,  which  this 
college  was  founded  to  express,  and  which 
these  lectures  are  designed  to  strengthen. 
At  such  a  point  of  meeting,  where  the 
paths  of  education  and  religion  join,  and 
where  one  pauses  as  at  the  crossing  of  the 
roads,  it  is  inevitable  that  he  should  glance 
along  both  these  great  highways  of  human 
life  as  they  traverse  the  hills  and  valleys 
of  experience,  and  should  inquire  whither 
each  road  directs  the  traveller  and  which 
way  it  is  best  to  go.  What  is  the  relation 
of  education  to  religion  ?  How  far  do 
these  two  highways  coincide  and  at  what 
point  do  they  part?  Do  their  diverging 
tracks  involve  a  lasting  separation,  or  do 
the  roads  meet  again  as  they  approach 
a  common  end  ?  What  is  it  to  be  edu- 
cated ?  What  is  it  to  be  religious  ?  What 
is  the  religion  of  an  educated  man  ? 

When  one  hears  these  questions  raised, 
he  may  well  imagine  that  he  is  threatened 
with  a  renewal  of  the  long-protracted  de- 


bate  concerning  the  relation  of  science  and 
religion,  —  a  debate  on  whose  issue  the  life 
of  the  Christian  Church  has  often  been 
supposed  to  depend.  What  was  to  be- 
come of  religion  in  an  age  of  science  ? 
How  could  the  Mosaic  cosmogony  be  ad- 
justed to  the  doctrine  of  evolution  ?  Was 
there  room  for  miracle  in  a  world  of  law  ? 
What  was  left  of  the  Bible  if  its  origin  and 
its  diversities  of  teaching  were  thoroughly 
/  explored  ?  Must  religion  be  dismissed 
from  attention  by  a  modern  scholar  as  a 
survival  of  the  pre-scientific  view  of  the 
world  ?  Was  there  any  such  thing  as  the 
religion  of  an  educated  man  ?  —  such  have 
been  the  questions  which  for  generations 
seemed  of  critical  significance  for  religion, 
and  these  bitter  and  prolonged  controver- 
sies necessarily  involved  much  temporary 
doubt  of  mind  and  distress  of  heart.  The 
adjustment  of  religion  to  the  habit  of  mind 
of  an  educated  man  was  often  a  painful 
process  and  often  an  impossible  task. 

Fortunately  for  us  all,  however,  this  con- 
troversy between  science  and  religion  has 
had  its  day,  and  the  pathetic  history  of 
superfluous  antagonism  and  of  misplaced 
loyalty  now  interests  only  a  few  belated 
materialists  and  a  few  overslept  defenders 
of  the   faith.    The    chief   privilege   of   a 


serious-minded  young  man  who  begins  his 
mature  life  with  the  beginning  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  lies  in  the  fact  that  he  is  not 
likely  to  be  involved  in  this  heart-breaking 
issue  between  his  spiritual  ideals  and  his 
scholarly  aims.  Philosophy,  science,  and 
theology  are  all  committed  to  the  problem 
of  unification. 

Nor  has  the  issue  of  this  momentous 
conflict  been  a  truce,  as  though  each  party 
had  withdrawn  to  its  own  territory  and 
were  guarding  its  frontier  against  hostile 
raids.  Science  and  faith  have  discovered 
a  common  territory  which  they  possess, 
not  as  rivals,  but  as  allies.  Faith  has  com- 
mitted itself  to  scientific  method;  science 
has  recognized  that  its  work  begins  in 
faith.  "  The  world  of  science,'*  remarks 
one  of  the  greatest  of  American  philoso- 
phers, "  is  a  world  of  faith.  .  .  .  The 
faith  which  is  the  basis  of  religion  and  the- 
ology is  only  the  extension  and  completion 
of  this  faith  that  the  universe  is  a  perfect 
and  organic  whole."  ^  Thus  the  most  alarm- 
ing Intellectual  conflict  of  the  last  generation 
has  already  become  of  merely  historical  in- 
terest to  the  thought  of  to-day.  A  census 
of  preaching  on  a  certain  Sunday  last  year 

^  C.  C.  Everett.  Tbe  Psychological  Elements  of  Religious 
Faith f  Macmlllan,  1902. 


Y- 


by  a  certain  Christian  communion  disclosed 
the  encouraging  fact  that  of  all  the  sermons 
preached  that  day  but  one  had  concerned 
itself  with  the  controversy  between  science 
and  religion. 

No  sooner,  however,  has  this  issue  con- 
cerning the  territory  of  science  and  religion 
been  dismissed,  than  a  new  and  not  less 
serious  question  opens  concerning  the  very 
habit  of  mind,  the  instincts  and  prepos- 
sessions of  educated  men,  in  their  relation 
to  the  religious  life.  Have  we  not  here, 
it  is  now  asked,  two  ways  of  human  disci- 
pline which  are  in  their  very  nature  and 
principles  distinct  ?  On  the  one  hand  is 
education,  —  a  gradual,  progressive,  con- 
tinuous work.  Classical  scholars,  I  be- 
lieve, do  not  favor  the  etymology  which 
finds  in  the  word  itself  the  thought  of  nur- 
ture,—  the  e-ducing  or  drawing  out  of  the 
pupil's  mind.  Yet  classical  writers  certainly 
emphasize  this  aspect  of  the  teacher's  work. 
Education  to  Plato  was  nurture  {rpocfyy]). 
The  lower  desires,  he  says,  are  wild  and 
must  be  tamed.  The  eye  of  the  student 
must  be  turned  toward  the  light.  In  short, 
the  object  of  education  to  Plato  is  personal, 
ethical,  spiritual  growth ;  and  the  ends 
of  education  are  manliness  {avSpeia)  and 
self-mastery,  balance,  soundness  of  mind 
6 


{cra)<f>poavur])}  Education  is  the  word  ap- 
plied by  Roman  writers  not  to  intellectual 
training  only,  but  to  the  care  of  children, 
to  the  suckhng  of  young,  to  the  providing 
of  imperishable  food,  —  the  assisting  of  a 
growth  from  within,  involving  patience  and 
faith,  nurture  and  time.^ 

Whatever,  then,  may  be  the  etymology 
of  the  word,  education  is  not  merely  instruc- 
tion, or  the  building  up  of  knowledge ;  it  is 
the  building  up  of  the  scholar's  mind  ;  the 
bringing  the  mind  to  self-consciousness ; 
the  birth  of  the  intellectual  life.  The 
quality  of  education  is  not  to  be  defined 
through  the  subject  of  education,  but 
through  the  effect  of  that  subject  on  the 
student's  mind.  That  subject  is  most 
educative  which  most  draws  out  the  stu- 
dent. No  subject  contributes  to  educa- 
tion if  it  be  mechanically,  repressively,  or 
stupidly  taught.  The  end  of  education  is 
lot  information,  but  inspiration ;  not  facts, 
rules,  tables,  but  insight,  initiative,  grasp, 
growth,  character,  power.     Physical  science 

iSee  the  admirable  Essay  of  R.  L.  Nettleship,  "The  Theory 
of  Education  in  Plato's  Republic,"  in  E.  Abbott's  Hellenica. 
Rivingtons,  1880. 

2  Educit  enim  obstetrix,  educat  nutrix,  instituit  paedagogus, 
docet  magister.  — Varro,  quoted  in  Nonius  Marcellus,  5.105. 

Vitulus  marinus  educat  mammis  fetum.  —  Plin.  9.  i  5.  i . 

Alere  est  victu  temporali  sustentare,  educare  autem  ad  satietatem 
perpetuam  educere.  — Nonius,  5.5. 


may  be  the  summons  of  education  to  one 
nature;  classical  learning  to  another;  tech- 
nical skill  to  another ;  and  all  are  justified 
in  education,  not  because  they  are  old 
subjects,  or  new  subjects,  or  academic  sub- 
jects, or  bread-and-butter  subjects,  but 
because  they  awaken  the  student's  mind. 
The  great  word  of  modern  thought,  evolu- 
tion, is  but  another  word  for  education. 
Education  is  the  evolution  of  the  indi- 
vidual ;  evolution  is  the  education  of  the 
race. 

And  meantime  what  is  religion  ?  Accord- 
ing to  the  still  surviving  tradition  of  many 
churches  religion  is  not  a  process  of  evolu- 
tion, but  a  process  of  revolution ;  not  a  way 
of  education,  but  a  way  of  transformation  ; 
not  a  growth,  but  a  surprise.     It  delays  its 
approach,  it  is  inaccessible  to  the  natural 
state  of  mind  or  the  natural  qualities  of  the 
child.  It  springs  upon  one  out  of  the  mys- 
tery of  the  universe;  it  shines  on  one  with 
a  sudden  flash  of  light,  as  on  Paul  by  the 
I  Damascus    road ;    it    revolutionizes     the 
j  nature ;  it  is  a  second  birth.  Religion  and 
J  education  are  thus  set  far  apart.     Life  is 
like  a  ship  with  water-tight  compartments, 
in  one  of  which  we  may  carry  the  habits 
of  our   education,  and  in  the    other   of 
which  we  may  say  our  prayers ;  as  Fara- 
8 


day  is  said  to  have  dismissed  from  his 
mind  the  methods  of  his  laboratory  when 
he  went  to  worship  in  his  little  Sandema- 
nian  chapel.  Here  and  there,  indeed,  the 
roads  of  religion  and  of  education  may 
meet,  but  they  cross,  as  it  were,  on  higher 
and  on  lower  levels,  where  the  collision 
of  thought  which  might  occur  at  a  grade- 
crossing  may  be  happily  escaped. 

Now  it  is  unquestionably  true  that  the 
experience  of  religion  is  often  tumultuous, 
sudden,  surprising  ;  the  access  of  a  new  hfe ; 
the  birth  of  a  new  power.  The  history  of 
conversion  is  not  the  history  of  an  illusion 
or  of  a  fever.  The  growth  of  Christian 
virtue,  as  Bushnell  remarked,  is  not  a  vege- 
table process.  But  are  not  the  same  inci- 
dents of  crisis,  revelation,  awakening,  birth, 
to  be  observed  in  the  history  of  education  ? 
Does  there  not  arrive  in  many  experiences 
of  the  intellectual  life  a  moment  of  intellec- 
tual conversion,  the  starting  into  life  of  an 
unsuspected  capacity  or  desire?  Education 
is  not  inconsistent  with  regeneration.  The 
development  of  the  mind  is  made  pictu- 
resque and  dramatic  by  the  frequent  disclos- 
ure of  new  aspects  of  truth  which  beckon 
to  the  student  as  a  new  vista  of  beauty- 
surprises  the  traveller  at  a  new  turn  of  the 
road.  Nothing  is   so   delightful  to  watch 


In  the  life  of  a  college,  and  nothing  so  fully 
rewards  a  faithful  teacher,  as  to  observe 
this  awakening  of  a  young  mind  to  the 
persuasiveness  of  the  truth ;  this  transfor- 
mation of  irksome  tasks  into  positive  and 
commanding  interests.  The  mind  is  born 
again ;  the  youth,  like  the  Prodigal  Son, 
comes  to  himself,  and  the  teacher  says. 
This  my  son  was  dead  and  is  alive  again ; 
he  was  lost  and  is  found. 

Under  the  same  law,  though  with  pro- 
founder  emotional  experience,  occur  the 
rebirths  of  the  reHgious  life.  Sometimes, 
indeed,  they  are  Hke  startling  convulsions 
of  nature,  volcanic  and  unanticipated, 
breaking  in  upon  the  normal  habit  of  the 
soul  as  a  sudden  volcanic  eruption  over- 
whelms a  sleeping  town.  Yet  these  criti- 
cal upheavals  of  the  human  spirit  are  no 
more  typical  of  the  religious  life  than 
they  are  of  the  process  of  education.  A 
volcanic  eruption  is  not  representative  of 
the  order  of  nature.  It  reveals  a  region 
of  interior  fire  which  here  and  there 
bursts  forth  with  amazing  power,  but  it 
is  an  abnormal  incident  in  the  tranquil 
process  of  the  evolution  of  the  world. 
Nothing  could  be  more  exaggerated  than 
the  inclination  of  my  brilliant  and  beloved 
colleague.  Professor  James,  to  regard  the 

lO 


ecstasies  and  fevers,  the  earthquakes  and 
volcanoes,  of  spiritual  experience  as  normal 
aspects  of  the  religious  life.  Under  such 
a  view  religion  would  be  not  a  form  of 
health  and  sanity,  but  a  form  of  intoxi- 
cation or  fever ;  and  the  religious  life, 
intermittent,  spasmodic,  hysterical,  must 
fail  to  command  the  rational  confidence  of 
an  educated  man.  These  abnormal  inci- 
dents, these  volcanic  eruptions,  in  fact, 
make  more  impressive  the  orderliness  and 
continuity  which  mark  the  normal  con- 
dition of  the  spiritual  life.  The  religious 
nature  is  no  more  abnormal  and  revolution- 
ary than  the  physical  or  the  intellectual  life 
of  man.  It  is  not  a  scene  of  catastrophes 
and  pathological  excesses,  but  of  a  silent 
process  of  evolution  and  education,  not 
without  friction,  reversion,  and  effort,  but 
with  a  general  movement  of  expansion, 
progress,  and  growth.  Both  education  and 
religion  have  their  crises,  their  awakenings, 
their  calls  to  self-expression,  as  a  river  has 
its  turbulent  rapids  and  its  sudden  falls, 
where  the  course  of  the  stream  is  marked 
by  surge  and  foam  ;  but  through  these  the 
river  makes  its  way,  as  through  quiet 
reaches  and  sunny  meadows,  and  the  occa- 
sional agitations  are  but  incidents  in  its 
steady  movement  toward  the  sea. 

II 


Here,  then,  is  the  conviction  with  which 
/one    must    begin  if  he  would    commend 

^'  religion  to  an  educated  man.  [Religion  it- 
self is  education. 3It  does  not  sever  into 
two  sections  the  rational  nature  of  man.  It 

V  is  consistent  with  the  growth  of  the  mind;  it 
confirms  the  principle  of  evolution.  Other 
aspects  of  religion  may  make  their  appeal 
to  other  conditions  of  life,  to  moods  of  dis- 
couragement, or  repentance,  or  doubt,  or 
fear,  or  sin ;  but  to  the  academic  life  the  first 
condition  of  responsiveness  to  religious 
influence  is  the  recognition  that  in  their 
fundamental  method  and  final  aim  religion 
and  education  are  essentially  consistent, 
coordinate,  mutually  confirmatory,  funda- 
mentally one. 

Let  us  look,  then,  at  each  side  of  this 
proposition  which  affirms  the  unity  of 
education  and  religion.  Religion  is  educa- 
tion :  that  is  the  first  statement  of  the 
truth.  We  have  seen  that  education  con- 
cerns itself  not  so  much  with  subjects 
studied,  as  with  the  educative  effect  of 
whatever  subject  may  be  approached.  In 
other  words,  the  subject  of  education  is 
not  the  task,  but  the  person.  Through 
what  discipline,  asks  the  modern  educator, 
and  by  what  method  within  that  discipline, 
can  one  draw  out  from  the  complexity  of 

12 


human  purposes  a  person,  with  intentions 
and  ideals  which  shall  fit  him  for  the  effective 
service  of  the  modern  world  ?  Education, 
said  a  wise  leader  of  academic  life  the  other 
day,  is  simply  the  making  the  most  of 
one's  self  for  usefulness.  "  The  aim  of 
education,"  according  to  Professor  Hanus, 
"  is  to  prepare  for  complete  living  .  .  .  and 
the  factors  of  educational  value  are  incen- 
tive and  power."  ^  "  It  becomes  impossi- 
ble," remarks  President  Butler,  "  for  us 
ever  again  to  identify  education  with  mere 
acquisition  of  learning.  ...  It  must  mean 
a  gradual  adjustment  to  the  spiritual  pos- 
sessions of  the  race."  ^ 

Is  not  precisely  this  intention  of  educa- 
tion, however,  the  primary  intention  of 
religion  ?  What  is  it  for  which  churches 
are  built,  and  for  which  forms  of  worship 
and  Sunday-schools  are  maintained  ?  Is  it, 
as  it  often  seems  to  be,  for  the  propagation 
of  a  creed,  or  the  defence  of  a  dogma,  or 
the  extension  of  denominational  control  P 
Are  churches  forts  whose  mission  is  war 
and  whose  ammunition  is  words  ?  Even 
the  most  zealous  controversialist  would 
deny  this  charge.  Behind  the  appearance 

1  Educational    Aims    and    Educational    Values.     Macmillan, 

1899,  p.  5-        . 

2  The  Meaning  of  Education^  and  other  Essays.  Macmillan, 

1900,  p.  16. 

13 


of  such  hostile  activity  there  lies  in  the 
intention  of  the  churches  a  unity  of  pur- 
pose which  makes  the  mission  of  the  com- 
peting sects  essentially  one.  They  are  in 
reality  not  forts,  but  schools.  They  may 
be  rivals  in  education,  as  colleges  may 
be  rivals,  through  differing  methods,  ad- 
vantages, or  aims ;  but  their  fundamental 
.  intention  is,  like  that  of  all  the  colleges, 
/  one.  It  is  the  nurture  and  development 
of  human  souls.  The  soul ,  ^^^r^^L  S?iiii^ 
for    the    church^  but    the   church  for  die 

IMM         II    ■■•Ml  I  Ml  '"-TIT  '  "III  I  mm\*\  llliiiu  \i';^n.:t'^tfkgiMlt  -,-«Jwi«*«,«*«s«****-?  ;^«^^«» 

squl.  What  God  asks  of  man  is  not  pri- 
marily adoration  and  recognition,  but  obe- 
dience, loyalty,  faith.  "  Bring  no  more 
vain  oblations,"  says  the  prophet;  "cease 
to  do  evil,  learn  to  do  well";  "Not  every 
one  that  saith  unto  me.  Lord,  Lord,"  says 
the  Master,  "shall  enter  into  the  kingdom, 
but  he  that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father 
which  is  in  heaven."  The  initial  purpose 
jCtLreligion,  that  is  to  say, Is  to  Hraw  out 
from  the  mingled  motives  and  conflicting 
desires  of  the  undeveloped  life  a  conscious 
^'  consecration,  which  shall  issue  into  a  new 
^  sense  of  capacity,  resistance,  initiative,  and 
power. 

One  of  the  most  striking  aspects  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  is  created  by  the  fact 
that   his    appeal   is   primarily    not   to    the 

14 


emotions,  or  the  opinions,  but  to  the  will. 
"  Follow  me,"  he  says ;  "  Take  up  thy 
cross  and  follow  me  '* ;  "  Be  it  unto  thee 
even  as  thou  wilt"  ;  "  Whosoever  shall  do 
the  will  of  God,  the  same  is  my  brother  "  ; 
"  If  any  man  wills  to  do  the  will,  he  shall 
know  of  the  doctrine."  The  discipleship 
of  Jesus,  that  is  to  say,  is  not  sentimental, 
occasional,  emotional  ;  nor  is  it  doctrinal, 
intellectual,  philosophical ;  it  is  ethical,  edu- 
cative, a  form  of  obedience,  the  beginning 
of  spiritual  growth.  The  unmeasured  re- 
bukes of  Jesus  are  reserved  not  for  the 
sinners  with  weak  wills,  but  for  the  self- 
righteous  with  wills  strongly  and  wrongly 
set.  The  religion  of  Jesus  is  a  religion  of 
education.  It  is  the  drawing  out  of  the 
person  ;  it  is  the  discipline  of  the  will. 

Religion  is  education.  If  this  proposi- 
tion is  true,  then  the  method  of  religion 
must  proceed  in  the  same  faith  which  edu- 
cation implies,  and  must  in  the  main  fol- 
low the  same  road.  And  what  is  the  faith 
which  justifies  the  process  of  education  ? 
It  is  a  twofold  faith  —  a  faith  in  truth 
and  a  faith  in  persons.  The  wise  teacher 
believes,  first,  in  the  significance  and  dig- 
nity of  the  truth.  Every  expression  of  the 
truth,  however  insignificant,  deserves  recog- 
nition and  respect  as  the  open  road  which 

15 


leads  from  the  less  to  the  greater,  from 
truths  to  truth.  That  is  what  gives  to  the 
teacher  his  patience.  He  does  not  expect 
to  educate  the  mind  all  at  once  ;  he  has 
heard  the  great  saying :  "  He  that  is  faith- 
ful in  that  which  is  least,  is  faithful  in  that 
which  is  much."  The  teacher  makes  him- 
self the  servant  of  the  least  of  truths  for  the 
sake  of  the  greatness  of  the  whole  of  truth. 

The  teacher  believes,  secondly,  in  per- 
sons, in  the  capacity  of  his  pupils  to  learn, 
in  their  responsiveness  to  truth  when 
fitly  presented,  in  the  possibiHty  of  a 
kindled  interest  and  a  determined  loyalty. 
He  believes  in  these  young  lives  even 
when  they  do  not  believe  in  themselves. 
Neither  their  dulness,  nor  their  indiffer- 
ence, nor  their  wrong-headedness  over- 
comes his  faith  in  their  interior  nature  as 
adapted  to  truth  and  as  given  for  him  to 
e-duce.  Thus,  in  education  the  growing 
mind  meets  the  growing  truth,  until  at 
last  the  things  that  are  in  part  —  the  par- 
tial truth  and  the  partial  mind  —  are  done 
away,  and  the  whole  mind  and  the  whole 
truth  meet  face  to  face,  and  then  the  pro- 
cess of  education  is  complete. 

If  this  is  education,  what,  we  ask  once 
more,  is  religion?  Religion,  we  must 
answer,  comprehends  these  same  acts  of 
i6 


faith  ;  and  by  the  completeness  of  this 
twofold  faith  religion,  like  education,  is 
to  be  judged. 

On  the  one  hand  religion  rests  on  faith 
in  truth ;  faith  in  the  rational  revelation 
of  truth ;  faith  in  its  growth  from  less  to 
more ;  faith  that  the  real  will  in  due  time 
open  into  the  ideal.  If  there  is  any  mis- 
take in  the  teaching  of  religion  which  has 
alienated  from  its  influence  great  numbers 
of  young  minds,  it  is  the  mistake  of  de- 
manding full-grown  religion  from  a  half- 
grown  life.  It  is  a  pedagogical  error  of 
which  no  skilled  teacher  would  be  guilty. 
Education  must  begin,  not  with  the  ab- 
normal, the  unrecognizable,  the  remote, 
but  with  the  natural,  the  near,  the  verifi- 
able, the  elementary.  Education  proceeds 
from  the  demonstrably  known  to  the  less 
obviously  unknown,  from  the  geography 
of  the  neighborhood  to  the  map  of  the 
world,  from  the  observation  of  the  neigh- 
boring field  to  the  comprehension  of  the 
planets  and  the  atoms. 

The  same  demand  is  laid  upon  religion. 
It  is  preposterous  to  expect  from  the  child 
the  conviction  which  mature  experience 
alone  suggests.  To  thrust  upon  young 
lives  a  demand  for  emotions  or  opinions 
which  are  unreal  and  premature  is  to 
c  17 


encourage  weak  minds  to  hypocrisy  and 
strong  minds  to  reaction.  Religious  edu- 
cation takes  the  facts  of  the  spiritual  life 
just  as  they  are,  imperfect,  unformed, 
elementary,  and  draws  out  their  signifi- 
cance and  suggestiveness.  It  lays  on  a 
young  mind  no  complication  of  con- 
formity, no  conventional  consent.  It  says 
to  him :  "  Here  is  your  life  with  its 
real  experiences,  its  doubts  and  fears, 
its  ambitions  and  regrets,  its  duties  done 
and  undone,  its  desires  for  generous  ser- 
vice, its  repentance  for  foolish  mistakes. 
It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  these  facts 
will  adjust  themselves  outright  to  the 
prevailing  creeds,  or  catechisms,  or  confes- 
sions. Take  the  facts  as  they  are,  recog- 
nize them,  harmonize  them,  follow  them, 
obey  their  admonitions,  listen  to  the 
teachers  who  understand  them,  and  by 
degrees,  stumblingly  indeed,  and  with 
many  mistakes  to  correct  along  the  way, 
the  process  of  your  education  will  proceed, 
through  the  truths  you  possess,  to  the 
truth  which  shall  make  you  free.  The 
Spirit  of  the  Truth,  the  Comforter,  shall 
guide  you  into  all  truth." 

How  wonderful  was    this    pedagogical 
instinct   in   Jesus    Christ !    How   reason- 
ably both  his  friends  and  enemies  were  led 
i8 


to  call  him  Teacher,  so  that  this  word 
is  applied  to  him  more  than  forty  times  in 
the  New  Testament!  He  believed  in  the 
growth  of  the  soul,  from  an  elementary- 
obedience  to  a  sufficient  faith.  The  figures 
of  speech  through  which  he  would  teach 
his  doctrine  of  the  kingdom  are  almost 
invariably  figures  of  growth :  the  mustard 
seed;  the  leaven;  the  sower;  the  blade;  the 
ear  ;  the  full  corn.  He  begins  where  people 
are ;  he  uses  the  little  to  make  it  much ; 
he  puts  small  attainments  at  interest.  Even 
the  single  talent  should  earn  its  increase. 
The  scribes  and  Pharisees  were  enforcing 
a  system  ;  Jesus  was  watching  a  growth. 
The  one  is  the  method  of  the  hothouse  ; 
the  other  the  method  of  the  open  air.  The 
one  was  art ;  the  other  was  nature.  The 
one  was  religious  instruction  ;  the  other 
was  religious  education.  So  is  the  king- 
dom of  God  —  says  Jesus  —  as  though  a 
man  should  plant  corn  in  his  field,  and 
the  seed  should  spring  up  and  grow,  he 
knoweth  not  how.  That  is  the  miracle 
with  which  rational  religion  surprises  the 
discouraged  soul.  The  seed  of  loyalty, 
once  planted,  groweth  up  one  knoweth 
not  how;  and  the  truths  which  once 
seemed  fragmentary  and  meagre  ripen 
into  a  harvest  of  reasonable  faith. 

19 


On  the  other  hand  religion,  like  educa- 
tion, demands  faith  in  the  capacity  of  the 
individual  soul.  The  work  of  a  teacher 
becomes  simply  heart-breaking  if  he  is 
not  sustained  by  faith  in  the  potential 
quality  of  each  young  life.  Somewhere, 
somehow,  beneath  the  dulness  and  inertia 
of  the  most  unresponsive  mind  there 
lies,  he  believes,  an  interest  in  something ; 
and  to  discern  that  point  where  the  mind 
touches  reality,  to  draw  out  the  intellectual 
life  as  by  the  magnet  of  a  compelling  truth 
—  that  is  the  challenge  which  the  true 
teacher  welcomes  and  obeys.  / 

Precisely  this  act  of  faith  in  the  soul 
marks  the  beginning  of  religious  teach- 
ing. As  one  surveys  the  dealings  of  Jesus 
Christ  with  the  varied  types  of  persons  who 
claimed  his  interest,  what  is  more  impres- 
sive than  the  faith  he  has  in  them  ?  He 
believes  in  them  before  they  believe  in 
themselves ;  he  claims  them  before  they 
think  themselves  fit  to  follow  him ;  he 
takes  them  where  they  are,  and  by  his 
faith  in  them  makes  of  them  more  than 
any  one  but  he  believes  they  could  be- 
come. If  any  leader  of  men  ever  had  a 
right  to  give  up  any  follower,  certainly 
Jesus  was  justified  in  cutting  off  from 
fellowship  the  unstable  Peter.  How  could 
20 


any  man  seem  less  like  a  rock,  and  more 
like  the  sand  which  a  rising  tide  of  oppo- 
sition sweeps  quite  away  ?  Yet  Jesus  sees 
even  in  this  man  the  capacity  for  leader- 
ship, trusts  him,  forgives  him,  shapes  the 
sand  into  firmness  until  it  becomes  sand- 
stone, and  verifies  the  promise,  which  to 
many  a  hearer  must  have  seemed  almost  a 
jest,  "  Thou  art  Peter,  thou  shalt  be  called 
a  rock."  How  contrary,  therefore,  to  the 
spirit  of  Jesus,  and  how  destructive  of 
religious  education,  is  any  depreciation  or 
denial  of  the  spiritual  possibilities  of  any 
human  soul.  Many  a  young  life  has 
swung  clean  away  from  religion,  because 
it  seemed  to  demand  of  him  quite  another 
nature  than  his  own.  He  is  wilful,  care- 
less, foolish,  doubtful  of  much,  sure  of 
little.  What  part  has  he  among  the  saints? 
Religion,  let  him  remember,  is  education. 
Its  very  purpose  is  to  accept  the  unful- 
filled desire  and  the  unrealized  dream, 
and  to  draw  them  out  into  firmness,  sta- 
bility, permanence,  realization.  Sound  re- 
ligious experience  verifies  the  strange 
prophecy  which  the  aged  Simeon  made 
concerning  the  infant  Jesus,  that  through 
him  "  The  secrets  of  many  hearts  should 
be  revealed."  A  man  commits  himself  to 
the  way  of  Christ,  conscious  of  imperftct 

SI 


knowledge  and  halting  discipleship,  and 
by  degrees  there  are  revealed  to  him 
secrets  in  his  own  heart  which  he  himself 
had  never  fully  known,  and  that  which  he 
was  meant  to  be  grows  out  of  what  he 
thought  he  was,  as  naturally  and  gradually 
as  a  flower  of  surprising  fairness  blooms 
out  of  a  gnarled  and  unlovely  stalk. 

Religion  is  education.  It  is  the  truth 
first  clearly  stated,  perhaps,  for  modern 
scholars  by  Lessing  in  his  epoch-making 
proposition  that  "  Education  is  revelation 
for  the  individual,  revelation  is  education 
for  the  race.'*  It  is  the  truth  first  com- 
municated to  the  New  England  theology 
by  Horace  Bushnell's  treatise  in  1847  ^^ 
"  Christian  Nurture,''  a  book  which  came 
like  the  dawn  of  the  first  spring  morning 
after  a  harsh  winter  of  New  England  cold. 
"  Calvinism,"  wrote  Bushnell,  "  is  a  reli- 
gion which  begins  explosively,  causes  little 
or  no  expansion,  and  subsides  into  a  tor- 
por. Its  religion  is  a  kind  of  transcen- 
dental matter,  which  belongs  on  the  outside 
of  life  —  a  miraculous  epidemic,  a  fireball 
shot  from  the  moon."  The  Christian  life, 
he  teaches,  begins  with  nurture.  "  The  aim, 
effort,  and  expectation  should  be,  not  as  is 
commonly  assumed,  that  the  child  is  to 
grow  up  in  sin,  to  be  converted  after  he 
22 


comes  to  a  mature  age ;  but  that  he  Is  to 
open  on  the  world  as  one  that  is  spiritually 
renewed."  "The  child  is  to  grow  up  a 
Christian  and  never  know  himself  as  being 
otherwise."  ^ 

Shall  we  then  say,  asks  many  a  mind, 
that  this  normal,  unconstrained  education 
of  the  spiritual  life  is  a  natural  or  a  super- 
natural growth  ?  Does  the  power  which 
thus  lifts  life  act  from  below  or  from 
above  ?  Is  this  education  of  the  soul 
human  or  divine  ?  That,  we  must  an- 
swer, is  as  if  one  should  ask  whether  the 
growth  of  the  plant  proceeds  from  the 
action  of  the  soil,  or  from  the  action  of 
the  sun.  It  proceeds  from  both,  from  the 
nourishing  earth  and  from  the  inviting 
sunshine.  It  is  both  natural  and  super- 
natural. No  analysis,  thank  God,  can 
determine  which  fragment  of  the  stalk, 
which  petal  of  the  flower,  is  a  product  of 
the  earth  or  of  the  sky.  In  every  cell  of 
the  meanest  flower  that  breathes,  there  is 
manifested  the  unity  of  the  universe.  So 
it  is  in  the  growth  of  the  soul.  The  nat- 
ural and  the  supernatural  conspire.  The 
light  within  Is  one  with  the  light  from 
above.  What  Is  revelation  to  the  Indi- 
vidual Is  education  for  the  race.     This  is 

1  Christian  Nurture y  Scribner,  1861,  p,  10. 

23 


the  truth  which  most  dignifies  the  history 
of  the  society  of  Friends  —  the  truth  of 
the  normality,  reality,  accessibility,  im- 
mediateness,  of  the  revelation  of  God  to 
the  personal  soul  of  man.  "  The  early 
Friends,''  wrote  one  of  their  historians, 
"made  a  practical  experiment  of  Chris- 
tianity from  the  inside.  The  secret  light 
that  shone  in  the  heart  was  a  revelation  of 
God ;  the  faint  streak  of  dawn  which  began 
the  heavenly  day."  The  Inner  Light  is 
described  by  George  Fox,  now  as  the 
"  Christ  within,"  now  as  the  "  Seed."  It  is 
from  within  and  yet  it  is  from  above.  It  is 
I  —  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  that  dwelleth 
in  me.  "  God  has  given  to  us,"  wrote 
Fox,  to  those  whom  he  called  Friends  of 
the  Truth,  or  Children  of  the  Light,  "  God 
has  given  to  us,  every  one  of  us  in  par- 
ticular, a  light  from  himself  shining  in  our 
hearts  and  consciences,  and  we  have  found 
this  light  to  be  a  sufficient  teacher  to  lead 
us  to  Christ  Jesus." 

Such,  then,  is  the  aspect  of  religion  which 
for  the  moment  concerns  us.  Religion  is 
education.  It  is  impossible,  however,  to 
dismiss  the  analogy  without  observing  in 
a  word  its  other  side.  If  it  be  true  that 
religion  is  in  one  aspect  education,  it  is 
also  true,  and  should   be   constantly  re- 

24 


called  in  the  academic  life,  that  education 
is  fundamentally  one  aspect  of  religion. 
It  is  often  debated  whether  education 
should  be  wholly  secularized,  or  whether 
there  should  be  superadded  to  the  pro- 
gramme of  education  some  teaching  of  the 
principles  of  religion.  Nothing  could  tes- 
tify more  plainly  than  this  debate  to  the 
prevailing  misinterpretation  of  the  nature 
of  religion.  If,  as  is  often  assumed,  reli- 
gion is  a  matter  of  theological  dogma  or 
ecclesiastical  rule,  then  it  certainly  makes 
a  field  of  knowledge  which  may  be  divided 
from  the  work  of  the  school  and  the  uni- 
versity, and  reserved  as  the  field  of  the 
church.  When,  however,  it  is  thus  pro- 
posed to  detach  the  method  of  education 
from  religion,  the  only  rational  answer 
which  can  be  made  is  that  such  a  separa- 
tion is  essentially  inconceivable,  because 
education  is  in  itself  a  religious  work. 
The  relation  of  the  teacher  to  the  youth 
is  not  mechanical  and  occasional,  as  though 
the  young  mind  were  a  pump  from  which 
an  intermittent  flow  of  knowledge  may  be 
laboriously  drawn.  The  teacher,  as  we  have 
seen,  stands  before  the  undeveloped  capacity 
of  the  scholar  as  an  agent  in  the  evolution 
of  a  personal.  He  is  a  laborer  together 
with  God,  a  participant  in  a  creative  work. 

^5 


What  sustains  him  in  the  routine  and  de- 
tail of  his  task  is  the  reverent  sense  of 
this  participation  with  the  Eternal.  He 
works  by  faith,  not  by  sight. 

When  a  mature  mind  looks  back  on  the 
process  of  its  education,  what  are  the  in- 
cidents which  seem  significant?  They  are 
the  moments,  perhaps  infrequent,  when 
through  the  forms  of  study  there  flashed 
some  suggestion  of  the  meaning  and  uses 
of  life.  And  how  did  such  disclosures 
arrive  ?  They  proceeded  from  the  teachers 
who  were  able  to  impart  themselves  and 
to  draw  out  one's  hesitating  nature  into 
loyalty,  discipleship,  appreciation  of  the 
beautiful,  reverence  of  the  truth.  But  this 
communication  of  power  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  religious  life.  This  which 
redeems  one  from  being  a  book-worm,  a 
critic,  a  pedagogue,  a  cynic,  and  shows  one 
how  to  be  a  scholar,  an  idealist,  a  person, — 
this  is  the  beginning  of  the  religion  of  an 
educated  man.  The  Holy  Spirit,  the  spirit 
of  the  truth,  is  the  spirit  of  education.  The 
true  teacher  may  reverently  repeat  what 
Jesus  Christ  humbly  said  of  himself,  "  No 
man  cometh  unto  me,  except  the  Father 
draw  him."  The  issue  of  education  is  the 
great  confession  of  St.  Paul,  "  The  spirit 
beareth  witness  with  our  spirit  that  we  are 
26 


the  sons  of  God.'*  Religion  is  education  ; 
but  education,  when  its  process  and  end 
are  revealed,  is  religion. 

A  student  may  fancy  that  he  may  evade 
his  tasks  in  education,  may  waste  his  years, 
may  sit  on  the  margin  of  the  academic  life 
and  watch  its  stream  flow  by,  and  may  lose 
little  out  of  life  but  a  few  profitless  bits  of 
information  and  a  few  academic  grades. 
A  teacher  may  find  himself  tempted  to 
mechanical  methods,  may  be  almost 
crushed  under  the  dead  mass  of  unre- 
sponsive minds,  may  be  overweighted  by 
the  burden  of  routine.  What  shall  renew 
vitality,  courage,  effectiveness,  responsive- 
ness in  teacher  and  taught?  It  is  the 
conviction  that  education  is  religion.  Not 
somewhere  else,  in  churches  or  forms 
of  worship,  are  educated  men  to  expect 
the  witness  of  the  spirit  of  God,  but  in 
the  increase  of  the  student's  fidelity,  in  the 
steadiness  of  the  teacher's  hope,  in  the 
grasp  and  vision  which  issue  from  educa- 
tion, in  the  patient  faithfulness  to  that 
which  is  least  and  the  happy  disclosure 
of  that  which  is  much,  in  revelation  through 
education,  and  self-discovery  through  self- 
discipline.  When  an  academic  community 
perceives  that  education  is  itself  a  religious 
task,  then  there  need  be  no  further  debate 

27 


concerning  religious  teaching  in  a  college. 
It  is  already  there,  just  as  health  and  good 
air  and  appetite  and  hope  and  laughter 
and  duty  are  there ;  and  the  spirit  of  edu- 
cation expands  because  it  breathes  the 
atmosphere  of  the  spirit  of  God.  When 
a  teacher  takes  up  his  work,  not  as  though 
he  were  one  cog  in  a  machine,  but  as 
though  he  were  a  person  among  persons, 
a  laborer  together  with  God  in  the  unfold- 
ing of  a  student's  nature,  called  to  unveil 
within  the  truths  which  perplex  men,  the 
Truth  which  makes  men  free,  —  what  is 
this  but  one  form  of  the  Christian  ministry, 
a  priesthood  ordained  to  teach  the  religion 
of  an  educated  man  ?  Life,  such  a  teacher 
demonstrates,  is  not  divided  and  discord- 
ant ;  it  is  harmonious  and  one.  That 
which  on  its  academic  side  is  education  is 
on  its  human  side  religion.  One  is  not  a 
teacher  except  he  kindle,  waken,  commu- 
nicate the  contagion  of  personality,  show 
the  way  of  the  spirit  of  truth ;  but  he  who 
is  thus  a  teacher  is  at  the  same  time  a 
minister  of  religion.  It  is  as  Matthew 
Arnold  said  of  teachers  like  his  father  at 
Rugby :  — 

**  Servants  of  God  ! — or  sons 
Shall  I  not  call  you  ?    Because 
Not  as  servants  ye  knew 

28 


Your  Father's  innermost  mind. 
He,  who  unwillingly  sees 
One  of  his  little  ones  lost  — 
Yours  is  the  praise,  if  mankind 
Hath  not  as  yet  in  the  march 
Fainted,  and  fallen,  and  died  ; 
See  !  in  the  rocks  of  the  world 
Marches  the  host  of  mankind, 
*         *         *         *         * 
Strengthen  the  wavering  line, 
Stablish,  continue  our  march. 
On,  to  the  bound  of  the  waste. 
On,  to  the  City  of  God." 

The  true  teacher  verifies  what  was 
spoken  of  Jesus,  "When  He  putteth 
forth  His  sheep,  He  goeth  before,  and 
the  sheep  follow  Him  for  they  know  His 
voice/*  Over  the  hills  and  valleys  of 
thought  the  teacher  goes  before  his  little 
flock,  until  at  last  the  tracks  of  the  various 
shepherds  along  the  bypaths  of  education 
meet  at  the  cross-roads  where  religion  and 
education  join ;  and  those  that  have  heard 
the  voice  of  the  faithful  teacher  find  them- 
selves in  the  great  company  which  moves 
together  toward  the  fold  of  truth,  following 
the  shepherd  of  souls. 


29 


II.   THE    MESSAGE    OF   CHRIST 
TO    THE    SCHOLAR 


OF  THE     "^ 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


II.   THE    MESSAGE   OF   CHRIST 
TO   THE   SCHOLAR 

HE  religious  life  has  many 
aspects  and  interprets  va- 
rious needs,  but  to  the 
academic  mind  the  most 
commanding  fact  concern- 
ing religion  is  its  analogy 
with  education. 
Religion,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  edu- 
cation of  personality.  Religion,  as  educa- 
tion, reveals  life  to  itself  by  revealing 
within  the  life  of  man  the  spirit  of  God. 
Religion,  as  education,  begins  with  faith 
in  the  capacity  of  man  to  respond  to  the 
spirit  of  truth,  and  proceeds,  like  educa- 
tion, through  faith  in  the  revelation  of 
truth.  Finally,  religion  idealizes  education 
itself,  and  touches  both  teacher  and  taught 
with  a  new  sense  of  obligation,  reverence, 
patience,  and  power. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  led  through  the 
principles  of  education  toward  a  defini- 
tion of  the  religion  of  an  educated  man.  But 
what,  we  now  go  on  to  ask,  is  the  finished 
product  of  education  ?  What  is  the  type 
of  personality  which  issues  when  educa- 
tion has  done  its  work  ?  It  is  the  scholar. 
Before  the  student  stands  ever  the  ideal 
of  the  scholar ;  before  the  teacher  lies  the 

D  33 


.y 


/ 


problem  of  converting  a  student  into  a 
scholar.  And  what  is  a  scholar  ?  There 
are  many  misconceptions  of  the  scholar's 
life.  It  is  sometimes  fancied  that  a  man 
of  information  is  a  scholar,  but  a  walking 
encyclopaedia  is  no  more  a  scholar  than 
a  catalogue  is  a  library.  Again  it  is  fan- 
cied that  when  one  becomes  a  critic  of 
scholars,  he  becomes  a  scholar  himself. 
The  critic  is  familiar  with  the  habits 
and  products  of  scholars ;  he  quotes  and 
judges  and  condemns  as  though  the  crit- 
ical temper  were  a  mark  of  the  scholarly 
mind.  Criticism,  however,  though  it  may 
rise  to  the  dignity  of  scholarship,  may 
easily  sink  into  mere  imitation  of  the 
scholar,  as  though  a  valet  were  to  dress 
himself  in  the  clothes  of  the  gentleman 
whom  he  attends.  Nothing  is  more  remote 
from  the  nature  of  the  scholar  than  the 
critical  spirit.  The  scholar  is  a  creator, — 
with  the  chastening,  humbling  sense  of  a 
part  in  the  work  of  creation;  while  the 
critics,  as  the  most  scholarly  of  American 
critics  has  said,  are  like  a  chattering  flock 
of  barn-swallows  who  circle  round  this 
creative  work,  building  their  nests  against 
the  Infinite, 

"  And  twittering  round  the  work  of  larger  men. 
As  they  had  builded  what  they  but  deface.'* 

34 


What,  then,  is  the  mark  of  that  way 
of  life  which  the  philosopher  Fichte  called 
the  vocation  of  the  scholar  ?  The  scholar, 
we  must  answer,  is  the  person  whose  mind 
is  educated.  Through  whatever  way  of 
study  he  may  have  come  —  and  who  shall 
say  what  road  he  must  follow?  —  his  mind 
has  been  gradually  disciplined,  until  it  has 
become  the  effective  instrument  of  his  will. 
The  mark  of  the  scholar  is  not  that  he  is 
well  informed,  for  a  schoolboy  may  know 
many  facts  unknown  to  him ;  it  is  not 
that  he  is  merely  well  read,  for  a  critic  may 
quote  more  freely  ;  it  is  that  he  has  ac- 
quired—  not  without  much  self-discipline 
and  renunciation  of  many  other  aims  in 
life  —  the  capacity  to  think  straight,  and 
to  discriminate  between  the  seeming  and 
the  real.  He  knows,  as  Emerson  once 
said,  "  that  a  pop-gun  is  a  pop-gun,  though 
the  ancients  and  honorable  of  the  earth 
affirm  it  to  be  the  crack  of  doom."  He 
has  acquired  a  susceptibility  toward  truth 
and  an  applicability  of  mind  to  the  prob- 
lems of  his  calling,  as  they  shall  from  day 
to  day  arise.  He  is,  as  Fichte  said,  a 
priest  of  truth,  looking  upon  his  vocation 
as  the  purpose  of  God  for  him.  The 
truth  has  made  him  free.  He  dedicates 
his  life  to  the  truth.   "In  silence,"  says 

35 


Emerson,  "in  steadiness,  in  severe  ab- 
straction, let  him  hold  by  himself  apart, 
enough  if  he  has  this  day  seen  something 
truly/' 

Such  is  the  scholar,  the  servant  of  the 
least  of  truths,  because  the  seer  of  the  great- 
ness of  Truth.  As  one  of  the  most  gifted 
of  American  scientific  scholars  has  said : 
"  Behind  this  manifested  nature  of  which 
we  know  an  infinitely  small  part,  there  is  a 
vastly  greater  infinite  of  the  imminently 
possible  yet  never  happening,  of  which  we 
know  nothing.  ...  In  such  a  realm  the 
spirit  may  contentedly  dwell,  feeling  that 
it  is  in  its  own  fit  house."  -^  Here  is  the 
privilege  of  the  scholar's  life ;  here  is  the 
persuasion  which  draws  one  to  the  habits 
and  ideals  of  the  academic  world.  In  an 
age  and  country,  where  the  solicitations 
of  commercialism  are  so  overwhelming, 
fortunate  are  those  who  may,  as  Emerson 
says,  "  raise  themselves  from  private 
considerations  and  breathe  and  live  in 
illustrious  thoughts.'*  Here  is  the  only 
aristocracy  which  a  hurrying,  shifting, 
democratic  world  can  permanently  respect 
—  the  aristocracy  of  unambitious  and 
unworldly  scholars,  content  to  Hve  simply 

^  N1  S.  Shaler.  International  Review.  December-March, 
1902-3,  p.   301. 

Z6 


if  they  may  live  in  the  world  of  the  ideal, 
regarding  as  the  true  wealth  of  life  the 
wealth  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the 
good. 

But  what  relation,  we  go  on  to  ask,  has 
this  life  of  the  scholar  with  the  habits  and 
motives  of  religion  ?  Even  if  it  be  true 
that  education  is  a  religious  work,  is  it  not 
true  that  the  scholar  is  at  last  set  free  from 
the  method  of  education,  and  has  become 
a  law  unto  himself?  Has  he  not  found  a 
religion  of  his  own,  in  which  his  study 
becomes  his  shrine,  where  in  the  solitude 
of  his  thoughts  he  worships  his  own  ideal 
of  the  truth  ?  Does  not  the  scholar  look 
from  his  study  windows  and  see  religion 
doing  its  work  among  the  ignorant,  the 
sinners,  the  outcasts  of  the  world,  and 
may  he  not  thank  God  that  he  is  not  as 
other  men  are,  and  draw  his  curtains  on 
this  struggling,  tempted  world,  to  give 
himself  to  his  own  sacred  and  happy  task  ? 

Certainly,  we  must  answer,  the  religious 
life  comprehends  many  a  circle  of  human 
experience  in  which  the  scholar's  vocation 
has  no  place.  Whatever  other  privileges 
the  scholar  enjoys,  he  certainly  has  not, 
as  the  learned  have  often  believed  they 
had,  a  monopoly  of  religion.  The  meas- 
ure  of  learning,  as   Schleiermacher  said, 

37 


IS  not  the  measure  of  piety.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  scholar,  by  his  very  immunity 
from  many  of  the  solicitations  of  the 
world,  is  at  the  same  time  set  out  of  reach 
of  many  a  wave  of  religious  feeling,  which 
sweeps  in  upon  more  exposed  souls  and 
cleanses  the  nature  as  by  an  inflooding  and 
surprising  tide.  The  message  of  Jesus 
was  not  primarily  delivered  to  the  scholars 
of  his  time.  These  were,  on  the  contrary, 
the  persons  who  were  least  accessible  to 
his  message.  "  I  am  not  come,"  he  said 
in  lofty  satire,  "  to  call  the  righteous,  but 
sinners  to  repentance.*'  "  They  that  are 
whole  need  not  a  physician,  but  they  that 
are  sick."  It  is  not  until  the  scholar 
emerges  —  as  some  day  he  is  certain  to 
emerge  —  from  his  secluded  life  of  learn- 
ing into  the  world  of  common  human  life, 
with  its  passions  and  regrets,  its  obligations 
and  opportunities,  its  pity  and  its  fellow- 
ship, that  he  comes  into  any  realization 
of  the  scope  and  power  of  religion,  or  any 
understanding  of  the  gospel  of  Christ. 

Yet  there  is  a  message  of  Christ  to 
the  scholar.  There  are  conditions  of  the 
effective  use  of  learning  which  are  not 
intellectual,  but  ethical  and  religious. 
The  teaching  of  Jesus  has,  indeed,  noth- 
ing to  say  concerning  the  acquisition  of 

38 


knowledge  or  the  materials  of  modern 
education.  The  gospel  is  not  a  text-book 
of  instruction  from  which  modern  scholars 
can  derive  the  materials  for  their  task. 
Accurately  speaking  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  Christian  sociology,  or  Christian 
economics,  or  Christian  science.  The  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  concerns  itself  with  the 
relation  of  human  life  to  the  life  of  God, 
and  with  the  principles  of  human  duty 
among  the  life  of  men.  It  does  not  class- 
ify people  as  scholarly  and  ignorant.  It 
gathers  up  all  the  different  types  of  human 
life  into  a  comprehensive  unity  of  disci- 
pleship,  so  that  one  is  no  longer  peculiar 
or  isolated,  a  scholar  or  a  peasant,  rich 
or  poor,  teacher  or  scholar,  but  is  held 
in  the  great  companionship  of  strug- 
gling, doubting,  sinning,  repenting,  rejoic- 
ing human  souls.  Yet,  1  repeat,  there  is  a 
message  of  Christ  to  the  scholar.  Just  as 
his  teaching  sometimes  seems  peculiarly 
directed  to  the  poor,  as  when  he  quotes  the 
Prophet's  word,  "  The  poor  have  the  gospel 
preached  to  them  "  ;  just  as  again  it  seems 
a  message  to  the  sinner,  as  when  St.  Paul 
writes  that,  "  Jesus  came  into  the  world  to 
save  sinners";  just  as  those  who  mourn 
open  the  gospels  and  are  comforted ;  just 
as  those  who  are   happy  turn   to  it  and 

39 


read,  "  That  my  joy  might  remain  with 
you  and  your  joy  be  full  ** ;  so  among  the 
diverse  types  of  life  which  Jesus  meets 
are  the  scholars,  and  to  them  also  he 
announces  the  conditions  which  control 
the  Christian  use  of  their  special  gifts. 

It  may,  at  the  first  statement,  appear 
improbable  that  Jesus  has  any  message  of 
importance  to  offer  to  the  scholar.  The 
prevailing  tradition  of  the  Christian  Church 
has  emphasized  the  lowly,  untutored,  pro- 
vincial conditions  of  his  lot.  The  lower  the 
level  of  his  education  and  opportunities 
was  set,  the  higher  have  seemed  his  super- 
natural claims.  He  fulfilled,  it  is  held,  the 
prophecy  concerning  the  Messiah,  that  he 
should  be  despised  and  rejected  of  men.  It 
is  probably  true  that  he  was  not  a  student 
in  the  higher  schools  of  Hebrew  learning, 
so  that  when  the  Pharisees  said  of  him, 
"  How  knoweth  this  man  letters,  having 
never  learned  ? "  they  perhaps  meant  to 
say :  "  How  is  it  that  this  man  knows  our 
law,  when  he  has  not  learned  it  in  our 
schools  ? " 

Yet,  as  this  very  passage  indicates,  Jesus, 
though  not  bred  in  the  academic  circle  of 
his  day,  seemed  to  those  who  heard  him  by 
no  means  an  untutored  peasant  or  inspired 
carpenter.  He  knew  letters,  though  he  had 
40 


not  learned  them  of  the  scribes.  On  almost 
every  page  of  the  first  three  gospels  there 
is  disclosed  in  him  the  student  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, the  master  in  dialectic,  familiar  with 
the  scholar^s  method  of  logic  and  rejoinder, 
with  a  mind  which  was  disciplined,  self-con- 
fident, and  keen.  When,  at  the  beginning  of 
his  work,  he  is  tempted  to  the  misuse  of  his 
ministry,  he  shows  himself  already  familiar 
with  the  literature  of  the  ancient  Scriptures, 
quoting  to  the  tempter,  "  It  is  written;  it  is 
written.**  When  he  returns  to  the  synagogue 
in  Nazareth,  he  is  recognized  and  received 
by  his  old  neighbors  as  a  trained  teacher  of 
the  holy  word,  and  there  is  dehvered  to  him 
the  book  for  to  read.  When  he  opens  the 
book,  he  knows  where  the  Scripture  is  to 
be  found  which  makes  the  lesson  for  the 
day  and  reads  the  passage  whose  signifi- 
cance he  was  to  fulfil.  When  the  learned 
people  about  him  propose  to  convict  him 
of  self-contradiction  or  blasphemy  or  trea- 
son, they  do  not  hesitate  to  confront  him 
with  the  dicta  of  the  law,  assuming  him  to 
be  instructed  in  it  like  themselves ;  and 
Jesus  on  his  side  meets  these  learned  per- 
sons with  their  own  weapons  of  logical 
dialectic,  and  parries  their  talk,  and  thrusts 
so  keenly,  that  they  durst  ask  him  no 
more  questions.  Jesus,  in  short,  must  have 

41 


seemed  to  those  who  met  him  not  merely 
a  spiritual  seer,  a  beautiful  soul  —  as 
Strauss  calls  him  —  but  an  intellectual 
master,  with  extraordinary  resources  of 
argument  and  rejoinder,  of  lofty  irony  and 
intellectual  refinement.  He  had  a  right,  it 
seems,  to  deliver  a  message,  not  to  the 
meek  and  lowly  alone,  but  to  that  aristoc- 
racy of  scholars  who  regarded  it  as  their 
vocation  to  interpret  the  learning  of  the 
law. 

Yet  this  evidence  of  intellectual  fitness 
is  not  the  trait  in  Jesus  which  is  of  most 
importance  in  his  message  to  the  scholar. 
Beyond  this  technical  training,  adequate 
though  it  may  have  been,  the  gospels  re- 
port in  Jesus  a  much  profounder  quality 
which  immediately  impressed  his  hearers, 
and  which  we  perceive  at  once  to  be  the 
quality  which  distinguishes  the  scholar 
from  the  merely  learned  man.  It  is  the 
quality  of  wisdom,  insight,  foresight, 
grasp,  discernment  —  a  habit  of  mind  not 
to  be  derived  from  instruction  alone,  not 
dependent  upon  the  amount  of  informa- 
tion one  has  acquired,  but  the  mark  of 
intellectual  power,  of  spiritual  force,  of 
original  genius.  The  merely  learned  per- 
son reads  many  books,  and  reports  their 
but  before  the  mind  of  Jesus 


there  were  open  the  marvellous  books 
of  nature  and  of  life,  the  secrets  of  the 
fields  and  sky,  the  motives  hidden  in 
men*s  minds,  the  movement  of  events, 
the  destiny  of  Israel.  When  as  a  little 
boy  he  delayed  to  hear  the  debates  of  the 
learned  at  Jerusalem,  the  trait  that  startled 
those  graybeards  was  a  certain  intuitive 
wisdom  which  penetrated  their  subtle  dis- 
tinctions with  the  candor  and  insight  of 
a  mind  already  at  home  among  great 
thoughts.  They  were  astonished,  it  is 
written,  at  his  understanding  and  his  an- 
swers ;  just  as  many  another  learned  person 
has  had^  his  elaborate  reasonings  con- 
fronted and  overwhelmed  by  the  untaught 
wisdom  of  some  winsome,  candid,  gifted, 
little  boy.  From  that  time  on,  it  is  re- 
corded, Jesus  increased  not  in  stature  and 
in  charm  alone,  but  in  wisdom  also. 
When  his  public  life  began,  the  first  im- 
pression of  his  teaching  was  derived,  not 
so  much  from  what  he  said,  as  from  the 
manner  in  which  he  spoke ;  the  mastery 
and  authority  which  distinguished  his  wis- 
dom from  the  learning  of  his  time.  The 
people  were  astonished  at  his  doctrine,  be- 
cause he  taught  them  with  authority  and 
not  as  the  scribes. 

This  is  the  quality  which  gives  to  the 

43 


higher  scholarship  its  distinction.  When 
one  reads  Emerson,  or  Goethe,  or  Mill, 
or  Martineau,  he  anticipates,  of  course, 
that  these  scholars  shall  be  well  informed 
in  the  learning  of  the  past ;  but  it  is  not 
their  erudition  which  gives  them  their 
primacy.  It  is  their  insight  and  compre- 
hensiveness, their  discernment  of  motives 
and  tendencies,  their  capacity  to  read  the 
mind  of  the  world,  to  interpret  life  and 
history  as  other  men  read  open  books. 
When  Mr.  Emerson  was  asked  for  the 
arguments  which  supported  his  doctrine 
of  the  immanence  of  God,  he  answered: 
"  I  could  not  possibly  give  you  one  of  the 
arguments  you  cruelly  hint  at  on  which 
any  doctrine  of  mine  stands,  for  I  do  not 
know  what  arguments  mean  in  reference 
to  an  expression  of  thought.  I  delight  in 
telling  what  I  think,  but  if  you  ask  why 
I  dare  to  think  so,  or  why  it  is  so,  I  am 
the  most  helpless  of  men."  If  we  raise 
that  habit  of  mind,  with  its  calm  assur- 
ance, its  indifference  to  demonstration,  to 
its  highest  power,  we  come  into  view  of 
the  kind  of  wisdom  which  marks  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ.  Very  rarely  does 
he  descend  into  the  region  of  proof. 
There  is  no  proof  in  the  gospels  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God ;  no  proof  of  the  su- 

44 


premacy  of  duty ;  no  proof  that  the  peace- 
makers and  the  pure  in  heart  are  blessed. 
Once  he  approaches  an  argument  about 
the  truth  of  immortality,  but  even  this  is 
touched  with  a  gentle  irony,  as  though 
designed  to  meet  the  Sadducees  on  their 
own  ground.  Jesus  moves  in  the  religion 
of  assertion,  of  spiritual  axioms,  of  intel- 
lectual authority.  The  musician  does  not 
argue  for  his  art ;  he  utters  it,  and  those 
who  have  ears  may  hear.  The  bird  does 
not  prove  the  possibility  of  a  flying  ma- 
chine ;  he  spreads  his  wings  and  flies,  and 
his  self-expression  is  the  demonstration 
of  his  power.  So  it  is  that  Jesus  utters  his 
truth,  and  spreads  the  wings  of  his  spir- 
itual flight.  He  looks  upon  the  world  of 
nature,  its  sowing  and  reaping,  its  lilies 
and  its  weeds,  its  birds  and  grain,  and  the 
scene  is  to  him  a  book  from  which  he 
teaches  his  message.  He  looks  into  hu- 
man lives,  their  impulses  and  obstacles, 
their  sins  and  repentance,  their  capacities 
for  heroism  and  sacrifice,  and  reads  the 
meaning  of  natures  that  are  hidden  from 
themselves,  so  that  one  disciple  answers, 
"  Whence  knowest  thou  me  ?  "  He  looks 
into  the  mystery  of  the  universe,  and 
while  the  learned  debate  of  its  origin  and 
tendency,  he  reads  the  story  of  his  Father's 

45 


love,  and  a  new  theology  and  a  new  mo- 
rality issue  from  his  teaching  of  the  life  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  man.  In  Jesus  Christ, 
then,  we  have  a  teacher  to  whom  a  scholar 
may  not  unreasonably  listen.  The  mes- 
sage of  the  gospel  does  not  proceed  from 
ignorance,  or  superstition,  or  mysticism, 
or  the  visionary  schemes  of  an  Oriental 
peasant,  but  from  a  mind  not  untrained 
in  the  learning  of  his  time,  but  enriched 
by  an  extraordinary  and  untaught  endow- 
ment of  spiritual  wisdom.  Nothing  but 
the  still  profounder  traits  in  Jesus  Christ, 
of  religious  vision  and  moral  cogency, 
could  have  obscured  the  intellectual  great- 
ness which  justifies  his  message  to  the 
scholar.^ 

What,  we  go  on  to  ask,  is  this  message 
of  Jesus,  the  teacher,  to  the  intellectual 
hfe  ?  It  is  a  twofold  message.  It  speaks, 
first,  of  the  nature  of  the  truth  with  which 
the  scholar  has  to  deal ;  and,  secondly,  of 
the  nature  of  the  scholar  who  has  to  deal 
with  the  truth.  It  considers,  first,  the 
approach  of  truth  to  the  scholar ;  and, 
secondly,  the  approach  of  the  scholar  to 
the  truth. 

As  to  the  eflfect  of  truth  upon  the  scholar, 

1  See  also,  Hibbert  Journal^  July,  1 90 3,  p.  691  fF,,  "The 
Character  of  Jesus  Christ.** 

46 


we  may  begin  by  observing  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  in  its  negative  form.  Who  are  the 
persons  among  the  varied  types  of  hu- 
man life  which  from  day  to  day  confront 
him,  whom  Jesus  regards  with  the  most 
unmeasured  condemnation  ?  What  kind 
of  sins  appear  to  him  most  fundamental, 
irremediable,  hopeless  ?  One  of  the  most 
surprising  traits  of  the  gospels  meets  us  at 
this  point.  The  classification  of  conduct 
to  which  we  are  accustomed,  the  order  of 
sins  of  which  our  law  and  social  judgments 
take  account,  are,  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
without  argument  or  protest,  reversed. 
Jesus  is  astonishingly  merciful  toward 
many  faults  which  the  common  judgment 
of  the  world  holds  to  be  beyond  forgive- 
ness. He  accepts  the  penitent  adulteress, 
saying,  "  Neither  do  I  condemn  thee  ; 
go,  and  sin  no  more."  He  has  no  severe 
rebuke  for  the  doubt  of  Thomas,  or  the 
half-heartedness  of  Nicodemus.  He  can- 
not bring  himself  to  abandon  even  the 
plotting  Judas.  He  sees  beyond  the  lie  of 
Peter  to  a  possible  atonement  through  a 
strong,  brave  life.  This  extraordinary  toler- 
ance, however,  seems  checked  when  Jesus 
contemplates  another  kind  of  sin,  which  is 
apparently  much  more  venial,  but  which 
seems  to  affect  him  with  a  loss  of  hope. 

47 


Who  are  these,  who  in  his  moral  classifica- 
tion are  set  in  the  nethermost  circle  of  all ; 
the  only  sinners  of  whom  he  can  bring 
himself  to  say,  "  Woe  unto  you  ! "  Curi- 
ously enough,  they  are  not  adulterers,  or 
betrayers,  or  deniers  ;  but,  on  the  contrary, 
persons  of  social  consideration,  leaders  of 
the  church,  scholars  in  the  law.  And 
what  is  it  in  these  scribes  and  Pharisees 
which  smites  the  heart  of  Jesus  with  this 
sense  of  hopelessness?  It  is  their  self- 
sufficiency,  their  unteachableness,  their 
impenetrability.  The  truth  cannot  reach 
them  in  their  self-complacency.  The  light 
shines  into  their  darkness  and  the  dark- 
ness comprehends  it  not.  Seeing,  they 
see  not ;  hearing,  they  cannot  understand ; 
for  their  heart,  as  the  prophet  said,  "  has 
waxed  gross."  The  approach  of  his  mes- 
sage to  the  human  mind  demanded,  he 
knew,  first  of  all  a  quality  of  open-minded- 
ness,  docility,  receptivity,  intellectual 
humiUty ;  and  straight  across  that  way  of 
approach  which  truth  must  take  to  man 
lay  the  obstacle  of  the  closed  mind,  the 
satisfied  nature,  the  intellectual  inertia  of 
the  satiated  mind.  These  were  they  who 
entered  not  in  themselves,  and  suffered  not 
those  that  desired  to  enter.  This  was  the 
sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost ;  the  turning 

48 


the  back  upon  the  light,  which  could  not 
be  forgiven  in  this  world  or  in  the  world 
to  come. 

Who,  we  ask,  are  the  persons  most 
tempted  by  this  sin  of  spiritual  satiety  ? 
They  are  now,  as  they  were  then,  the 
scholars.  This  is  the  besetting  sin  of  the 
intellectual  habit ;  the  obstacle  that  stands 
between  a  man  who  intends  to  be  a  scholar 
and  the  work  he  wants  to  do.  Many  a  man 
has  fulfilled  the  discipline  of  his  student 
life,  and  sees  straight  before  him  the  voca- 
tion of  the  scholar,  and  then  he  is  smitten 
with  the  scholar's  palsy,  the  paralyzing 
sense  of  sufficiency,  self-consciousness,  or 
conceit.  He  has  gained  the  technique  of 
his  art,  but  he  has  lost  its  passion.  He  has 
acquired  a  style  and  has  lost  reality ;  he 
knows  much  and  fancies  that  he  knows  it 
all.  His  knowledge  is  that  which,  as  St.  Paul 
said,  puffeth  up.  He  has  gained  the  whole 
world  of  the  scholar  and  lost  the  soul  of 
the  scholar.  What  can  be  done  with  such 
a  man  ?  How  can  he  be  made  meek  and 
lowly  of  heart,  poor  in  spirit,  teachable, 
hungry  and  thirsty  after  righteousness, 
with  the  simplicity  that  is  toward  Christ  ? 
Here  is  where  the  hope  of  Jesus  for  men 
hesitates.  A  complete  reversion  of  mind 
is  demanded,  from  complacency  to  humil- 
E  49 


ity,  from  arrogance  to  simplicity,  from  the 
confidence  of  a  master  in  Israel  to  the 
spirit  of  a  little  child.  How  perplexing  to 
many  a  learned  man  must  have  been  the 
symbolism  of  Jesus,  when  among  the 
scholars  of  his  day  he  set  a  little  child, 
and  made  the  childlike  spirit  a  condition 
of  entrance  to  his  kingdom  !  How  prepos- 
terous seems  this  reversion  to  childhood ! 
Is  it  not  this,  we  ask,  that  one  has  in  his 
education  outgrown  ?  When  I  was  a  child, 
one  says,  I  thought  as  a  child,  but  when  I 
became  a  scholar'  I  put  away  childish 
things.  Should  not  the  child  look  to  the 
scholar,  instead  of  the  scholar  to  the  child  ? 
Should  not  thechild  say,  except  I  become  as 
this  scholar  I  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  truth  ^  Yet,  if  there  be  any  mark  of 
the  scholar  it  is,  as  Jesus  said,  his  child- 
likeness.  The  wonder  and  dimensions  of 
the  truth,  its  potential  revelations,  its 
baffling  mysteries,  keep  him  in  the  attitude 
of  an  eager,  docile,  wondering  child.  The 
ocean  of  the  unknown  stretches  away 
before  him  and  he  is,  as  Newton  called 
himself,  a  child,  gathering  pebbles  on  its 
beach.  Self-importance  and  self-satisfaction 
drop  away  from  the  scholar  like  a  disease 
of  immaturity;  and  his  scholarliness  is  like 
the   change   in    Naaman    when    his   flesh 

50 


came  again  like  the  flesh  of  a  little 
child. 

Here  is  the  difference  between  learning 
and  scholarship.  The  scholar  is  humbled 
by  his  task  and  chastened  by  his  ideals. 
The  higher  he  climbs  among  the  things 
that  are  known,  the  broader  becomes  the 
horizon  of  the  unknown.  The  greatest 
scholars  are  marked  by  that  childlike 
temper  for  which  Jesus  looked  in  his 
disciples,  the  humility  of  the  learner,  the 
reverence  of  the  truth-seeker,  the  attitude 
of  faith.  It  is  a  safe  rule  to  distrust 
the  learning  which  leads  to  arrogance ; 
and  to  avoid  the  scholar,  who,  as  was 
said  of  one  distinguished  Englishman, 
makes  science  his  forte  and  omniscience 
his  foible.  The  scholar  leaves  the  conceit 
of  learning  to  those  who  have  not  dis- 
cerned the  dimensions  of  truth  ;  and,  as 
in  the  days  of  Jesus,  the  poor  in  spirit 
inherit  the  kingdom  of  the  truth,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  little  child  alone  enters  that 
kingdom. 

Such  is  the  teaching  of  Jesus  concern- 
ing the  effect  of  truth  upon  the  scholar. 
The  approach  of  truth  to  the  educated 
mind  creates,  not  self-sufBciency,  cynicism, 
and  conceit,  but  humility,  simplicity,  and 
reverence.  The  scholar,  as  the  first  Psalm 

5» 


says,  does  not  sit  in  the  seat  of  the  scorn- 
ful, because  his  delight  is  in  the  law  of  the 
Lord.  The  other  aspect  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  concerns  the  scholar's  approach 
to  truth.  What  are  the  conditions  of  the 
scholar's  insight  ?  What  is  it  which  gives 
him  discernment,  effectiveness,  penetra- 
tion, wisdom,  and  breadth  ?  The  answer 
to  this  question  might  seem  to  be  simple 
enough.  The  scholar  is  the  finished  prod- 
uct of  education,  the  perfected  intellectual 
machine.  He  thinks  straight,  writes  forci- 
bly, observes  accurately,  generalizes  pru- 
dently. He  may  be  defective  in  other 
quaUties,  feeble  in  body,  infirm  in  moral- 
ity, deficient  in  spiritual  insight ;  but  if  the 
machinery  of  his  professional  thinking 
works  smoothly,  he  would  seem  to  many 
persons  to  be  a  scholar.  It  may  even 
happen  that  his  training  as  a  scholar  has 
involved  definite  weakness  in  other  parts 
of  life,  robbed  him  of  his  bodily  health, 
stifled  his  imagination,  paralyzed  his  moral 
enthusiasm,  yet  his  professional  capacity 
would  make  it  possible  for  him  still  to 
claim  the  title  of  scholar. 

It  is  quite  true  that  on  the  surface  of 
the  scholar's  life  it  has  this  appearance  of 
mechanical  or  technical  proficiency.  It 
is  even  true  that  specialized  capacity  tends 

52 


to  exclude  certain  spheres  of  sympathy  and 
knowledge,  as  in  the  famous  confession  of 
Mr.  Darwin  that  music,  which  had  once 
delighted  him,  was  no  longer  a  source  of 
pleasure,  and  that  his  mind  seemed  atro- 
phied toward  this  aesthetic  resource.  The 
scholar,  like  other  men,  falls  into  the  rut 
of  habit,  and  as  that  rut  grows  deeper  the 
escape  from  it  involves  a  severer  wrench. 
When,  however,  we  look  beneath  the  task 
of  the  scholar  to  those  qualities  which  create 
the  scholar,  it  becomes  plain  that  he  is  much 
more  than  a  computing,  observing,  or  ana- 
lyzing machine.  He  is  a  thinker,  projecting 
his  guesses  into  the  universe,  and  justifying, 
correcting,  or  refuting  them  by  the  facts. 
He  is  a  dreamer,  anticipating  an  invention, 
imagining  a  process,  pursuing  an  analogy, 
tracing  an  elusive  possibility,  and  then  with 
sanity,  restraint,  and  infinite  patience,  veri- 
fying or  denying  the  dream.  He  is  a  phi- 
losopher, holding  in  his  thought  a  picture  of 
the  universe,  and  thinking  God's  thoughts 
after  him.  If  this,  however,  is  the  nature  of 
the  scholar,  if  this  is  what  we  call  the  scien- 
tific habit  of  mind,  then  these  approaches 
to  truth  demand  something  much  more  than 
mechanical  accuracy  or  specialized  training. 
They  call  for  perfect  fidelity,  transparent 
sincerity,  an  instinct  for  truth,  an  unflag- 

53 


ging  self-control ;  and  these  are  quite  as 
much  moral  qualities  as  intellectual  gifts. 
What  we  may  call  intellectual  morality  is, 
in  short,  a  condition  of  the  scholar's  work. 
His  task  is  not  one  of  cleverness  alone,  but 
of  character.  This  is  what  the  philosopher 
Fichte  described  as  "  the  integrity  of  the 
scholar."  The  scholar  must  be  not  only 
quick  of  wits,  but  clean  of  heart.  The 
scientific  habit  of  mind  is  not  alone  the 
power  to  see  straight  and  reason  rightly ; 
it  is  quite  as  much  the  power  to  wait,  to 
sacrifice,  to  free  one's  self  from  passion, 
prejudice,  and  foar.  A  greater  gain  to  the  / 
world,  perhaps,  than  all  the  growth  of  ;>( 
scientific  knowledge  is  the  growth  of  this 
scientific  spirit,  with  its  courage  and  seren- 
ity, its  disciplined  conscience,  its  intellectual 
morality,  its  habitual  response  to  any  dis- 
closure of  the  truth. 

If  this  is  the  fairest  flower  of  the  scien- 
tific mind,  it  is  certainly  most  interesting 
to  observe  that  precisely  this  moral  quality 
in  the  intellectual  life  is  what  Jesus  de- 
mands in  his  message  to  the  scholar.  He 
is  not,  it  is  true,  a  teacher  of  science  con- 
cerned with  the  discovery  of  truth  ;  he  is 
a  teacher  of  religion  concerned  with  the 
character  of  the  soul.  Yet  he  sees  with 
perfect  clearness  that  the  character  of  the 

54 


soul  counts  in  the  discovery  of  the  truth. 
The  first  approach  of  the  mind  to  truth, 
he  teaches,  must  be  made,  not  by  intel- 
lectual acuteness,  but  by  moral  obedience. 
"  He  that  willeth  to  do  the  will,  he  shall 
know  the  doctrine."  The  path  to  insight 
is  through  fidelity.  "  To  him  that  is  faith- 
ful in  the  least,  that  which  is  much  is 
given.'*  Sympathy,  he  teaches,  is  a  trait 
not  of  the  emotions  alone,  but  of  the  in- 
tellect. Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  not  only 
with  thy  heart,  but  with  thy  mind.  There 
is  such  a  thing,  that  is  to  say,  as  intellec- 
tual aflfection.  According  to  Jesus,  in  one 
of  his  loftiest  axioms,  discernment  of  the 
highest  truth  depends  not  on  the  mind 
alone,  but  on  the  cleanness  of  one's  spir- 
itual nature.  The  pure  in  heart,  he  says, 
have  this  blessing,  that  they  shall  see 
God.  It  is  as  though  the  mind  were  a 
telescope,  through  which  the  stars  were  to 
be  seen,  while  the  moral  nature  were  the 
lens  which  gave  the  instrument  its  power. 
The  lens  is  but  a  part  of  the  instrument 
and  does  not  direct  its  mechanism,  yet  the 
least  fleck  upon  the  lens  blurs  the  image  of 
the  star.  So  the  unflecked  character  has  its 
part  in  the  scholar's  task.  Not  every  pure- 
minded  man  becomes  a  scholar,  for  the 
lens  needs  to  be  set  within  the  intellectual 

55 


life;  but,  when  through  the  instrument 
of  the  disciplined  mind  the  truth  shines 
upon  the  unstained  heart,  then  the  uni- 
verse opens  its  mystery  to  the  scholar  as 
the  depths  of  the  heavens  report  them- 
selves to  the  perfect  lens,  and  the  pure 
in  heart  see  truth  which  is  unrevealed  to 
the  soiled  or  tarnished  soul. 

"  Talent,"  said  Emerson,  "  sinks  with 
character ;  the  moment  of  your  loss  of  faith 
will  be  the  solstice  of  your  genius."  "  What 
impresses  one,"  said  Phillips  Brooks,  "  in 
the  most  Godlike  men  we  have  ever  seen, 
is  the  inability  to  tell  in  them  what  of  their 
power  is  intellectual  and  what  is  moral." 
Here  is  the  point  where  many  a  man  fails 
to  be  a  scholar.  He  has  done  all  the  work 
that  seems  to  make  a  scholar,  but  has  just 
missed  the  character  which  is  demanded 
of  the  scholar.  It  is  as  though  he  had 
laboriously  climbed  to  the  heights  of  his 
vocation,  and  a  subtle  mist  had  crept 
round  him  and  shut  off  the  view.  The 
atmosphere  of  the  true  scholar's  mind  is 
clarified  by  his  sincerity,  integrity,  and 
sacrifice,  and  the  truth  lies  with  broad 
horizon  and  in  right  perspective  at  his  feet. 

Such  is  the  twofold  message  of  Christ 
to  the  scholar.  The  approach  of  truth  to 
the  scholar  demands  of  him  responsive- 


ness,  teachableness,  and  humility  ;  and  the 
approach  of  the  scholar  to  truth  demands 
of  him  obedience,  purity  of  motive,  love. 
What,  then,  is  this  relation  of  the  scholar 
to  truth  which  is  attained  when  the  truth 
and  the  mind  thus  meet  and  know  each 
other  ?  Is  this  relation  of  reverent  accept- 
ance and  loving  loyalty  the  scholar's  schol- 
arship alone  ?  Have  we  not  reached  the 
point  where  the  scholar's  religion  comes 
into  view,  and  where  at  last  the  ways 
of  education  and  religion  meet  in  the 
scholar's  faith  ?  This  is  the  answer  of  the 
scholar  to  the  message  of  Jesus  Christ. 
As  the  scholar's  knowledge  grows  from 
more  to  more,  so  more  of  reverence  in 
him  dwells.  As  he  ascends  into  the  hill 
of  the  truth,  he  comes  with  clean  hands 
and  a  pure  heart.  It  is  not  the  whole  of 
the  religion  of  Jesus.  Other  messages  are 
delivered  by  him  to  other  needs  of  life ; 
but  to  the  scholar  Jesus  still  says  that  he 
alone  who  does  the  will  can  know  the 
doctrine,  and  he  alone  who  is  pure  of 
heart  can  see. 

Is  this  faith  of  the  scholar,  we  ask 
in  conclusion,  a  sudden  and  unanticipated 
attainment,  like  the  abrupt  conversion  of 
many  souls,  or  is  it  a  slow  growth  of  ex- 
perience  issuing  from    many  efforts   and 

57 


mistakes  ?  Sometimes,  no  doubt,  it  is  a 
sudden  transformation.  The  scholar  is, 
not  infrequently,  born  again  in  an  intel- 
lectual conversion.  A  man  who  has  been 
dabbhng  in  scholarship,  a  dilettante,  an 
amateur,  hears  one  day  a  call  to  serious 
learning,  and  for  the  sake  of  truth  accepts 
in  a  moment  the  life  of  self-denial,  self- 
discipline,  humility.  But  this  is  one  of 
the  miracles  of  experience.  In  the  order 
of  nature  the  attainment  of  the  scholar's 
faith  issues  from  the  normal  growth  of  the 
student's  mind,  and  marks  the  ripening 
and  enriching  of  his  powers. 

In  three  widely  scattered  passages  of  the 
fourth  gospel  there  are  written  the  three 
successive  chapters  of  this  evolution  of  a 
scholar's  faith.  It  is  the  case  of  a  man 
named  Nicodemus ;  and  the  story  of  his 
life  is  a  summary  of  all  that  we  have  said. 
He  was  not,  like  most  of  those  who  came 
to  Jesus,  a  fisherman  or  peasant;  he  was 
a  cultivated  gentleman,  bred  in  the  schools 
of  learning;  and  the  message  which  he 
could  receive  must  be  a  message  to  the 
scholar.  He  came  to  Jesus,  first  of  all, 
not  with  the  noisy  crowd,  but  in  a  quiet 
hour  when  he  could  calmly  study  truth. 
It  was  a  prudent  plan.  His  was  a  scien- 
tific mind.  On  that  uninterrupted  even- 

58 


ing  Jesus  made  his  great  demand  of  the 
scholar,  that  he  should  become  a  child 
again  if  he  would  receive  the  perfect  truth. 
"  Except  a  man  be  born  again  he  cannot 
see  the  kingdom  of  God."  The  scholar 
goes  out  into  the  night,  unconvinced  and 
unconverted,  saying,  "  How  can  these 
things  be  ? "  and  for  two  years  we  do  not 
hear  of  him  again.  But  what  a  change  has 
come  over  his  mind,  when  once  more 
Nicodemus  steps  out  of  the  shadowy  back- 
ground of  the  gospel.  He  has  proceeded 
from  childlikeness  to  candid  sympathy, 
from  obedience  to  fidelity.  The  message 
of  Jesus,  he  now  says,  shall  have  its  hear- 
ing. "  Doth  our  law  judge  any  man  before 
he  hear  him  ? "  The  truth  has  now  ap- 
proached the  scholar,  as  the  scholar  at  first 
approached  the  truth.  Nicodemus  is  no 
longer  a  critic ;  he  has  become  the  brave 
and  patient  student,  the  candid  judge  of 
truth.  Then  once  more  this  cultivated 
gentleman  disappears  from  the  record  until 
the  life  of  Jesus  ends.  The  truth  seems 
nailed  upon  the  cross  and  buried  in  the 
grave.  Pilate  has  said  to  Jesus,  ''  What  is 
truth  ?  "  and  then  has  added,  "  Take  him 
away  and  crucify  him.**  It  is  the  moment 
when  all  who  believed  in  him  have  fled.  At 
that  moment  comes  once  more  the  scholar 

59 


—  he  who  had  once  wanted  to  debate  and 
judge.  He  comes  no  longer  to  criticise  or 
to  defend,  but  silently  and  loyally  to  serve. 
He  brings  his  myrrh  and  aloes  for  the 
body  of  Jesus  —  nay,  he  brings  his  own 
life  as  an  offering  for  the  truth  which  he 
has  learned  to  love.  At  the  moment  when 
the  truth  seems  defeated,  the  evolution  of 
the  scholar's  religion  is  fulfilled.  Step  by 
step  the  mind  of  the  educated  man  has 
moved,  from  criticism  to  sympathy,  from 
sympathy  to  sacrifice,  until  at  last,  pre- 
cisely when  many  an  untrained  mind  takes 
flight,  it  is  the  scholar  who  brings  the 
rational  offering  of  service  as  his  answer 
to  the  message  of  the  Christ. 


60 


III.  KNOWLEDGE  AND  SERVICE 


III.  KNOWLEDGE  AND  SERVICE 
E  have  traced  together 
the  successive  steps  in 
the  religion  of  an  edu- 
cated man,  the  growth  of 
religion  through  educa- 
tion, and  the  emergence 
of  education  into  religion. 
It  is  like  the  story  of  growth  in  nature, 
not  without  its  surprises  and  its  crises,  but 
with  the  steady,  normal  expansion  of 
natural  evolution,  as  a  plant  fulfils  its  des- 
tiny from  stalk  to  blade,  from  blade  to 
flower.  The  religious  life  unfolds  as  the 
natural  flower  of  the  process  of  education, 
and  the  process  of  education  reaches  its 
fragrance  and  richness  as  it  blooms  into 
the  scholar's  religious  life.  The  same  per- 
suasion of  the  ideal,  like  the  warmth  of 
the  sun  in  spring,  draws  out  the  scholar 
from  the  roots  of  education  and  then  bids 
his  growing  thought  blossom  into  the 
scholar's  faith. 

Precisely  at  this  point,  however,  when 
the  story  of  this  growth  from  root  to 
flower  seems  complete,  we  are  confronted 
by  a  new  demand  which  is  made  of  edu- 
cated men  by  the  spirit  of  the  modern 
world.  It  is  the  demand  for  service.  By 
one  of  the  most  extraordinary  transitions 

63 


in  the  history  of  human  thought,  the 
mind  of  the  present  age  has  been  led  from 
the  problem  of  individual  development  to 
the  problem  of  social  service.  Philosophy, 
economics,  science,  ethics,  —  all  these  fun- 
damental studies  now  concern  themselves 
in  a  quite  unprecedented  degree  with  the 
conditions,  relations,  and  needs  of  social 
life.  It  is  the  age  of  the  social  question, — 
of  the  renaissance  of  philanthropy,  of  the 
search  for  industrial  peace,  of  sociological 
speculations,  of  Utopian  dreams,  of  reli- 
gious unity.  Never  before  were  so  many 
persons,  rich  and  poor,  employers  and 
employed,  learned  and  ignorant,  so  stirred 
by  the  sense  of  the  life  in  common,  and 
applying  themselves  so  devotedly  to  the 
interpretation  and  amelioration  of  social 
life. 

With  the  age  of  the  social  question 
arrives  a  new  test  to  be  applied  to  the 
gifts  and  institutions  and  acquisitions  of 
all  classes  and  conditions  of  men.  It  is 
the  test  of  utility,  of  social  value,  of 
human  service.  To  the  scientific  or 
aesthetic  mind  it  may  be  still  interesting 
to  trace  a  growth  from  root  to  flower, 
but  the  new  spirit  proceeds  to  the  new 
inquiry  concerning  the  fruit  which  is  to 
follow.   It  is  not  whether   the  growth  is 

64 


fair  or  fragrant  that  the  mind  of  the  pres- 
ent age  inquires  ;  it  is  whether  it  is  noxious 
or  serviceable,  applicable  to  social  welfare 
or  cumbering  the  ground.  Never  was  there 
a  time  when  the  test  which  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  applies  to  his  discipleship  was  so 
thoroughly  accepted  concerning  all  truth 
and  life  :  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them. 
What,  asks  the  modern  world,  does  any 
social  movement  or  custom  or  tendency 
contribute  to  the  common  good  ?  What 
fruit  does  it  bear  for  social  service  ?  Is  it  to 
be  counted  among  the  causes  and  resources 
of  the  better  world?  Is  it  worth  producing 
or  maintaining  as  an  instrument  of  social 
salvation  ?  It  is  not  only  he  that  would  be 
great,  as  Jesus  said,  but  it  is  every  philo- 
sophical formula  or  economic  scheme  or 
social  institution  that  would  be  permanent 
which  must  prove  itself  the  servant  of  all. 
Such  a  test  of  excellence  may  well  appear 
at  its  first  statement  a  crude  and  even 
brutal  way  of  estimating  worth.  Is  there 
not,  one  may  ask,  an  intrinsic  excellence 
in  truth  and  beauty,  quite  detached  from 
questions  of  utility  ?  Are  we  to  become 
wholly  utilitarian  ?  Is  there  no  such  thing 
as  pure  science  ?  Is  not  beauty  its  own 
excuse  for  being?  Is  not  the  useless  often 
admirable  and  the  wayside  weed  a  source  of 
F  65 


joy  ?  This  interpretation,  however,  of  the 
spirit  of  the  modern  world  as  a  reaction  from 
ideaHsm  to  utilitarianism  does  not  represent 
the  real  character  of  the  age  of  service. 
A  reaction  of  this  nature  was  seriously  pro- 
posed by  philosophy  two  generations  ago 
and  is  not  quite  abandoned.  What  the 
modern  spirit  contemplates  is  not  a  retreat 

I  from  idealism,  but  an  expansion  of  ideal- 
ism. It  enlarges  the  scope  of  personal  ends 
through  observing  their  social  relations. 
It  deals  not  with  man  alone  but  with  man 
among  other  men ;  not  with  the  atom  but 
with  the  organism ;  not  with  a  Ptolemaic 
doctrine  of  the  universe  revolving  round 
the  single  life,  but  with  a  Copernican 
doctrine  where  the  single  life  finds  its 
orbit  within  the  larger  world.  The  spirit 
of  social  service  is  not  a  reversion  from 
idealism,  but    a    new    appreciation  of  the 

I  unity,  size,  and  range  of  the  world  in  which 

I  the  idealist  is  set. 

Whatever  institution,  then,  or  problem 
of  modern  hfe  one  may  consider,  he  finds 
the  new  idealism  applying  to  it  the  new 
test  of  social  service.  The  institution  of  the 
family,  for  instance,  has  been  for  many 
centuries  a  comparatively  unquestioned  and 
accepted  social  unit ;  but  there  is  now 
applied  to  this  domestic  relation  a  new 
66 


test.  "What,"  asks  the  i^W^^pifit,  "does 
this  coherent  group  signify,  not  merely  for 
those  whom  the  law  describes  as  '  the 
parties  concerned,*  but  for  the  social  order, 
the  stability  of  civilization,  the  future  of 
the  race  ?  "  The  problem  of  marriage  and  i 
divorce  when  thus  approached  acquires  ' 
new  significance.  Is  the  family,  as  some 
affirm,  an  obstacle  to  plans  of  social  trans- 
formation, an  inconsistency  with  the  social 
commonwealth  ?  Then  the  present  insta- 
bility in  the  domestic  tie  has  the  signifi- 
cance of  social  destiny.  Or  is  the  family  the 
unit  of  civilization,  the  issue  of  social  evo- 
lution, the  chief  defence  against  social  revo- 
lution ?  Then  the  preservation  of  the  family 
is  a  part  of  the  protest  against  economic 
socialism,  and  the  problem  of  the  family  is  ^^i  y 
the  very  crux  of  the  social  question.  All 
this  new  significance  comes  of  regarding 
the  family,  not  from  the  point  of  view  or 
the  convenience  or  whims  or  lusts  of  indi- 
viduals, but  as  one  aspect  of  the  larger  prob- 
lem of  social  service  and  social  stability. 

In  the  same  way  the  new  spirit  judges 
the  extraordinary  modern  phenomenon  of 
the  multiplication  and  concentration  of 
wealth.  The  test  which  is  now  applied  to 
the  rich  man,  the  only  justification  of  his 
power  in  the  world  which  commends  itself 

67 


to  the  present  age,  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
principle  of  service.  We  speak  of  a  man 
as  being  worth  a  certain  sum  ;  but  modern 
idealism  asks,  "  How  much  is  he  really 
worth?  Is  he  worth  having?  Are  his 
possessions,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  once  asked,  to 
be  described  as  wealth,  because  it  is  well 
with  him,  or  ought  they  rather  to  be  called 
his  ill-th,  because  it  is  ill  with  him  ? "  Many 
a  rich  man,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  says  in  another 
place,  is  like  the  man  who,  when  his  ship 
was  wrecked,  tied  a  belt  of  gold  pieces 
round  his  waist,  with  which  later  he  was 
found  at  the  bottom ;  and  one  may  fairly 
ask  whether,  as  he  was  sinking,  the  man 
had  his  gold  or  whether  the  gold  had  him. 
If,  then,  a  rich  man  is  not  worth  having 
when  tested  by  the  principle  of  social 
service,  if  he  is  an  obstruction  or  a  menace 
in  modern  life  instead  of  an  effective  instru- 
ment of  social  welfare,  then  —  according  to 
the  new  spirit  —  he  must  be  regarded  as 
a  danger  to  civilization,  which  must  be 
somehow  mitigated  or  removed.  By  one  or 
another  means  of  legislation  or  taxation, 
or  perhaps  of  confiscation,  the  accumulation 
or  transmission  of  great  wealth  might  be 
made  extremely  difficult,  if  not  impracti- 
cable ;  and  all  these  ways  of  relief  from 
what  are  regarded  as  the  dangers  of  wealth 
68 


are  being  freely  proposed  by  the  social 
agitators  of  the  time.  Nothing  is  more 
obvious  than  that  wealth  is  being  scruti- 
nized and  weighed  as  a  question  of  social 
utility ;  and  nothing  is  more  touching 
than  to  observe  the  efforts  of  a  few  rich 
men  to  demonstrate  that  they  are  worth 
enough  to  justify  their  existence. 

The  same  test  of  service  is  applicable, 
and  is,  indeed,  being  already  unspar- 
ingly applied  to  the  educated  man.  How 
much  is  he  worth?  Is  he  worth  what  I 
he  costs  ?  Among  the  problems  and  needs 
of  modern  life  is  there  a  place  for  the 
higher  education,  or  does  a  liberal  train- 
ing detach  and  disqualify  from  effective 
service,  and  breed  mere  loungers  and 
lookers-on?  We  have  heard  for  some 
years  much  contemptuous  talk  of  the 
scholar  in  politics.  We  now  hear  the 
same  talk  of  the  scholar  in  business. 
More  than  one  employer  of  labor  has 
expressed  his  scepticism  about  the  ser- 
viceableness  of  education,  and  his  opinion 
that  the  new  world  calls  for  a  new  man, 
shaped  in  the  iron-works  and  the  rail- 
ways rather  than  in  the  colleges  and  the 
universities  of  the  land.  The  spirit  of 
democracy  cares  little  for  traditions  of 
superiority,  but  mercilessly   threshes   the 

69 


chafF  from  the  wheat ;  and  education  —  like 
the  institution  of  the  family,  like  the  accu- 
mulation of  wealth  —  must  justify  itself  by 
the  test  of  social  service  and  prove  itself  fit 
to  survive  as  adapted  to  the  new  environ- 
ment of  the  age  of  the  social  question. 

Such,  then,  is  the  new  test  of  value 
applied  by  the  spirit  of  the  modern  world. 
The  condition  of  permanence  and  of  pri- 
macy is  the  capacity  for  service.  When, 
however,  we  look  again  at  these  same 
conditions  of  society,  we  are  confronted 
by  another  fact  which  is  equally  impressive 
and  significant.  For  as  one  observes  the 
signs  of  the  present  time  he  is  at  once 
impressed  by  the  unprecedented  demand 
made  on  every  hand  for  knowledge  as  the 
condition  of  service.  It  is  not  only  true 
that  service  is  the  test  of  excellence,  but  it  is 
still  further  true  that  the  capacity  to  serve 
calls  for  a  new  quahty  of  preparedness, 
discipline,  alertness,  breadth,  and  force. 
One  of  the  most  striking  traits  of  modern 
civilization  is  its  constantly  increasing  de- 
mand for  higher  grades  of  service  to  util- 
ize the  complex  mechanism  of  a  new  world. 
The  motor-man  who  succeeds  the  car-driver 
must  be  a  more  observant,  disciplined, 
silent,  sober  man.  The  engineer  who  runs 
sixty  miles  an  hour  instead  of  twenty  must 
70 


be  a  better  man  than  his  predecessor,  both 
in  mind  and  in  morals.  The  very  switch- 
man controls  an  intricate  system  instead  of 
a  single  crank.  It  is  sometimes  asserted 
that  this  transformation  of  industrial 
methods  has  brought  with  it  nothing  but 
degradation  to  the  working  class ;  that  the 
age  of  machinery  has  reduced  the  hand- 
worker to  a  machine,  or,  rather,  to  a  single 
cog  in  a  machine ;  and  it  is,  of  course,  true 
that  much  of  the  work  of  life  is  done  in 
dehumanizing  and  mechanical  ways.  It  is 
still  further  true  that  with  every  shift  of 
industrial  method  there  is  temporary  dis- 
arrangement, which  bears  hardly  on  the 
least  adapted,  and  involves  friction,  anxiety, 
and  even  tragedy  for  some  ill-adjusted 
lives.  This  is  that  solemn  aspect  of  social 
evolution  which  is  described  as  the  cost  of 
progress.  When,  however,  we  turn  from 
these  economic  maladjustments  to  the  total 
scene  of  modern  life,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
industrial  movement  is  on  the  whole  not 
one  of  general  degradation,  but  one  of 
general  elevation.  The  pull  of  the  indus- 
trial world  is  in  the  main  a  pull  upward. 
The  way  out  of  industrial  distress  is  the 
way  up.  There  is  a  constant  summons  to 
the  best,  an  updraught  which  draws  the 
more  effective  to  the  higher  service  and 

71 


creates  a  vacuum  into  which  the  less  com- 
petent may  rise.  Never  was  there  a  time 
when  it  was  so  far  from  true  that  the  work- 
ing classes  were  as  a  whole  sentenced  to  a 
dehumanized  and  mechanical  career.  On 
the  contrary,  there  was  never  such  a  chance 
for  intelligence,  or  such  a  reward  for  fidel- 
ity. The  more  complex  is  the  machinery 
of  life,  the  more  competent  must  be  the 
man  who  shall  run  it.  A  man  must  be 
active,  sober,  and  teachable,  in  order  to 
keep  his  place  in  the  whirling  machinery 
of  the  modern  world.  The  best  agent  of 
temperance  to-day  is  the  nature  of  modern 
industry.  The  best  encouragement  of  popu- 
lar education,  technical  training,  sober 
habit,  and  inventive  skill  is  the  new  de- 
mand for  knowledge  as  the  condition  of 
service,  which  is  giving  to  the  hand-workers 
of  this  country  their  place  as  the  best  paid 
and  the  most  productive  in  the  world. 

This  demand  for  intelligent  service 
becomes  still  more  conspicuous  when  we 
turn  from  industrial  affairs  to  the  spe- 
cifically intellectual  and  spiritual  enter- 
prises of  modern  life.  A  whole  series 
of  undertakings,  which  have  for  genera- 
tions been  guided  by  sentiment,  kindli- 
ness, piety,  and  emotion,  now  present 
themselves  as  problems  of  knowledge, 
72 


science,  discipline,  expert  skill.  The  relief 
of  the  poor,  for  instance,  has  seemed  in 
the  past  sufficiently  safeguarded  if  it  were 
stirred  by  compassion,  generosity,  and 
tender-heartedness ;  but  it  has  been  at 
last  discovered  that  the  agent  of  charity 
must  be  not  only  pitiful,  but  educated, 
and  many  a  half-trained  giver,  who  has 
confused  alms-giving  with  charity,  looks 
back  at  the  mistakes  of  his  sympathy  and 
wonders  whether  he  has  not  done  more 
harm  than  good.  And  how  is  it  with  the 
cause  of  temperance  in  alcoholic  drink  ? 
Is  it  not  for  the  moment  most  obstructed, 
not  by  lack  of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice, 
but  by  the  wide-spread  doubt  whether  the 
right  method  of  approach  has  as  yet  been 
found,  whether  half-truths  can  do  the 
work  of  the  whole  truth,  and  intemper- 
ate agitation  can  promote  temperate  habits  ? 
With  still  more  pathos  the  industrial 
movement  of  the  present  age  is  calling  for 
a  new  kind  of  capacity  to  interpret  and 
direct  its  perplexing  issues.  We  find  our- 
selves suddenly  involved  in  a  complex 
industrial  machinery  which  we  have  not 
learned  to  control.  Combinations  of  capi- 
tal and  combinations  of  labor  have  out- 
grown the  skill  of  those  who  are  responsible 
for  them ;  we  are  run  away  with  by  forces 

73 


which  our  own  hands  have  made;  and 
the  confusion  is  only  intensified  by  those 
who  leap  to  our  rescue,  fancying  that 
some  special,  outright,  wholesale  change  in 
society  will  check  the  disorder  and  set  the 
world  right  again,  or  believing  that  these 
runaway  forces  should  be  permitted  to 
upset  the  whole  industrial  order,  so  that 
out  of  the  fragments  a  better  world  may 
be  made.  In  the  midst  of  these  noises  of 
the  time,  how  we  are  groping  for  wisdom, 
comprehensive  judgment,  consecrated  com- 
mon sense,  to  rein  up  the  runaways  and 
direct  them  toward  industrial  peace  ! 

What  shall  we  say,  finally,  of  the  teach- 
ing of  religion  —  this  which  has  in  the 
past  seemed  so  simple  a  matter,  address- 
ing itself  to  the  individual  will  and  heart 
and  to  the  end  of  personal  conversion  ? 
Why  is  it  that  the  Christian  ministry  has 
lost  so  much  of  its  leadership,  and  is 
already  regarded  by  millions  as  a  mere 
survival  of  the  days  of  faith,  a  side- 
tracked, ecclesiastical,  specialized  profes- 
sion, looking  toward  the  past  with  pious 
sentiments  rather  than  to  the  future  with 
masculine  authority  and  interpretative 
power  ?  It  is  certainly  not  because  the 
characteristic  traits  of  service,  devotion, 
consecration,  sympathy,  and  pity  are  lost ; 

74 


for  there  never  was  in  fact  a  more  gener- 
ous and  comprehensive  love  of  man  than 
prevails  in  the  Christian  Church  to-day.  It 
is  because  the  representatives  of  religion 
have  not  matched  their  love  of  service 
with  adequate  knowledge,  are  not  equipped 
for  the  work  of  a  new  world,  speak  pre- 
cipitately, pledge  themselves  to  imprac- 
ticable panaceas,  and  stamp  Utopian 
programmes  of  reform  with  the  name  of 
Christ.  Among  the  perplexing  issues  of 
our  national  life,  its  industrial  conflicts,  its 
problems  of  races  at  home  and  of  depen- 
dencies abroad,  what  sillier  words  have 
been  spoken  than  by  tender-hearted  Chris- 
tian ministers,  who  have  fancied  that  kindly 
emotion  was  a  sufficient  substitute  for  edu- 
cated training  in  the  economic  and  ethical 
problems  of  the  day  ?  The  new  world, 
that  is  to  say,  not  only  calls  for  new  arti- 
sans, new  charity-workers,  new  temperance 
reformers,  new  captains  of  industry ;  but 
for  a  new  ministry,  a  new  expansion  of  the 
range  of  studies  appropriate  to  the  teachers 
of  religion ;  that  the  ancient  spirit  of  un- 
selfish service  may  be  directed  by  a  new 
education  which  shall  make  men  fit  to 
control  the  forces  of  the  time. 

If,  then,  this  is  in  any  degree  a  true 
picture   of    the    modern    world,   we    are 

75 


brought  to  a  most  striking  and  suggestive 
situation.  On  the  one  hand  is  the  demand 
of  the  age  for  service  as  the  end  of  knowl- 
edge ;  on  the  other  hand  is  the  need  of  the 
age  for  knowledge  as  the  means  for  ser- 
vice. One  cannot  justify  education  to-day 
except  in  terms  of  social  welfare ;  but  one 
cannot  get  far  in  the  promotion  of  social 
welfare  except  through  education.  The  very 
complexity  of  modern  life  makes  its  dis- 
entanglement the  task  of  the  age ;  but  this 
task  involves  the  patience,  insight,  and 
versatility  of  the  educated  mind.  Such  a 
situation  is  full  of  significance,  both  for 
the  future  of  education  and  for  the  future 
of  social  service.  On  the  one  hand  it  indi- 
cates a  new  theory  of  education ;  and  on 
the  other  hand  it  gives  a  new  dignity  to 
work.  It  democratizes  the  one  and  it  ideal- 
izes the  other ;  and  both  these  changes 
must  be  recognized  with  care. 

First,  there  is  the  change  in  the  theory 
of  education.  If  the  test  of  education  is 
service,  then  that  man  is  educated  who  is 
best  adapted  for  the  environment  of  duty 
which  his  special  life  must  occupy  and  use. 
To  many  a  mind,  trained  in  the  earlier 
tradition,  such  a  definition  of  education 
seems  a  break  with  sound  learning,  which 
must  be  deplored  and  contended  against 

76 


to  the  last.  Education  to  almost  every 
one  who  began  life  fifty  years  ago  was 
comprehended  in  one  uniform  type  of 
liberal  learning,  which  was  practically  a 
survival  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the 
Renaissance.  At  the  centre  of  such  cul- 
ture stood  what  we  still  call  the  classics, 
as  though  no  modern  language  and  but 
two  ancient  languages  were  sources  of 
noble  thoughts  and  vigorous  style ;  and 
round  these  essentials  of  an  educated  man 
were  grouped  much  mathematics,  a  little 
history,  chiefly  of  Greece  and  Rome,  some 
speculative  philosophy,  and  here  and  there 
a  smattering  of  hearsay  science.  The  fin- 
ished product  of  this  education  was  a  re- 
fined, appreciative,  tolerant  mind,  a  citizen 
of  the  world,  —  or,  rather,  of  the  ancient 
world,  —  with  the  consciousness  of  belong- 
ing to  a  separate  and  Brahmin  class,  who 
could  be  called  gentlemen.  Educated  men 
all  the  world  over  could  recognize  each 
other.  They  used  the  same  dialect;  they 
quoted  from  the  same  authors ;  they  could 
appreciate  each  other's  citations  from  the 
classics.  The  last  thing  which  concerned 
them  was  the  applicability  of  knowledge  to 
service.  It  was  even  urged  that  a  subject 
lost  its  educational  value  if  it  was  assumed 
to  be  of  practical  utility.  The  bread-and- 

77 


butter  sciences  were  distinguished  from  the 
liberal  sciences.  The  educated  class  were 
thus  the  spiritual  descendants  of  the  mon- 
astic orders,  with  the  same  intellectual 
leisure  and  the  same  quiet  superiority  to 
the  toiling,  downward-looking,  productive 
masses  of  men.  I  have  heard  the  claim 
proudly  made  by  an  institution  of  learn- 
ing that  its  curriculum  was  devised  six 
hundred  years  ago ;  and  the  claim  reminds 
one  of  Longfellow's  picture  of  the  pious 
monk,  looking  down  from  his  monastery 
to  the  shore  :  — 


*'  Where  the  waves  and  mountains  meet. 
Where,  amid  her  mulberry  trees 
Sits  Amalfi  in  the  heat. 
Bathing  ever  her  white  feet 
In  the  tideless  summer  seas. 


On  its  terraced  walk  aloof 
Leans  a  monk  with  folded  hands. 
Placid,  satisfied,  serene. 
Looking  down  upon  the  scene. 
Over  wall  and  red-tiled  roof; 
Wondering  unto  what  good  end 
All  this  toil  arid  traffic  tend. 
And  why  all  men  cannot  be 
Free  from  care  and  free  from  pain. 
And  the  sordid  love  of  gain. 
And  as  indolent  as  he." 


78 


What  has  become  of  this  detached,  self- 
centred  form  of  education?  It  lingers  only 
as  a  survival  in  little  groups  of  English 
dons  and  dilettante  scholars,  who  sit  on  the 
edges  of  the  stream  of  modern  life  and  do 
not  fling  themselves  into  the  age  of  ser- 
vice. To  name  any  uniform  type  of  train- 
ing which  stamps  a  man  as  educated  is 
no  longer  possible.  One  is  educated  when 
he  is  master  of  himself  and  of  his  task. 
The  trade-school  educates  a  man  to  be 
a  plumber  or  a  bricklayer;  the  technical 
school  educates  another  to  be  an  engineer ; 
the  college  a  third  to  be  a  teacher ;  but  all 
have  their  part  in  the  new  education  which 
is  to  make,  not  one  corner  of  the  world, 
but  the  whole  diverse  world  of  social  life, 
the  field  of  service  for  an  educated  man. 
What  is  this,  indeed,  but  one  more  step 
in  the  history  of  democracy  ?  We  have 
become  familiar  with  the  democratizing  of 
government,  we  are  in  the  midst  of  the 
movement  to  democratize  industry,  and 
now  we  are  bidden  to  the  democratizing 
of  knowledge.  "  Democracy,"  Mr.  Lowell 
once  said,  "  means,  not,  I  am  as  good  as 
you  are,  but,  you  are  as  good  as  I  am." 
The  first  prejudice  which  democracy 
overthrows  is  the  prejudice  of  caste,  the 
patrician  temper,  the  aristocracy   of   acci- 

79 


dent,  privilege,  or  status.  I  was  talking  the 
other  day  with  a  young  negro  at  Hampton 
who  was  mending  a  wagon  wheel,  and  I 
remarked  that  I  should  be  sorry  to  have 
that  job  set  before  me.  "  Yes,"  replied  the 
young  man  with  perfect  simplicity  and  self- 
respect,  "  but  there  are  many  other  things 
which  you  can  do  and  which  I  cannot." 
Was  not  that  a  perfect  statement  of  the 
scope,  diversity,  and  dignity  of  democratic 
education  ? 

Does  all  this  mean,  then,  one  may  appre- 
hensively ask,  that  the  day  of  hberal  culture 
is  gone  ?  Are  gentle  manners,  classic  style, 
and  literary  appreciation  to  be  supplanted 
by  technical,  bread-winning,  wagon-mend- 
ing training  ?  On  the  contrary,  the  age  of 
service,  rightly  understood,  is  precisely  the 
age  when  intellectual  discipline  and  insight, 
power  of  expression  and  scientific  habit  of 
mind,  are  needed  as  never  before  to  direct 
and  interpret  the  world.  A  time  so  com- 
plex in  its  problems,  so  intense  in  its 
desires,  so  restless  in  its  purposes,  is  just 
the  time  for  the  academic,  scholarly,  un- 
materialized  mind  to  have  its  full  effect ; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  most  striking  facts  of 
the  progress  of  the  elective  system  in  uni- 
versity life  that,  while  large  groups  of 
students  are  led,  as  they  should  be  led,  to 
80 


those  applied  sciences  where  their  minds 
naturally  belong,  the  interests  of  literature, 
classical  learning,  and  pure  science  were 
never  so  devotedly  or  so  productively 
served. 

In  short,  the  principle  of  service  sees 
the  world  no  longer  as  divided,  fragmen- 
tary, a  disconnected  series  of  spheres,  in 
which  various  grades  of  education  may 
be  set ;  but  as  one  world,  an  organism,  a 
Cosmos,  a  single  sphere,  in  which  is  no 
higher  or  lower,  no  academic  aristocracy 
or  detached  group  of  the  learned,  but  an 
interdependent,  associated,  common  life, 
involving  the  researches  of  the  recluse  and 
the  bent  back  of  the  man  with  the  hoe. 
There  are  diversities  of  gifts  and  of  work- 
ings, says  the  apostle,  but  one  spirit.  To 
one  is  given  the  word  of  wisdom  and  to 
another  gifts  of  healing,  and  to  another 
the  interpretation  of  tongues,  but  in  the 
philosopher  and  the  physician  and  the 
linguist  alike  works  the  selfsame  spirit, 
dividing  to  each  one  severally  as  he  will. 

If  it  is  thus  true  that  the  effect  of  ser- 
vice is  to  be  the  democratizing  of  knowl- 
edge, it  is  equally  evident  that  the  effect 
of  knowledge  is  to  be  the  idealizing  of 
service.  Utility,  efficiency,  serviceable- 
ness  —  these  words  still  have  to  many 
G  8i 


minds  a  sound  of  cheapness,  narrowness, 
and  materialism,  as  mottoes  of  uneducated 
and  merely  practical  men.  But  suppose 
that  instead  of  a  world  divided  between 
utility  and  learning,  practice  and  theory, 
service  and  knowledge,  one  sees  the  world 
as  undivided  and  integral,  where  the  whole 
moves  forward  if  one  part  is  stirred.  Sup- 
pose one  thinks  of  human  lives  as  in  an 
organic  world,  as  members  one  of  another 
in  the  social  body,  —  then  the  dignity 
and  significance  of  each  life  become  deter- 
mined, not  by  the  kind  of  service  it  per- 
forms, but  by  the  performance  of  that 
specific  service  to  which  it  is  assigned. 
Here,  for  instance,  at  one  end  of  the 
working  world,  is  the  man  of  pure  science, 
detached  from  all  consideration  of  human 
welfare,  investigating  with  equal  enthusi- 
asm poisons  and  antidotes,  disease  and 
health,  bacteria  that  kill  and  bacteria  that 
cure.  What,  to  him,  is  a  practical  age  ? 
What  sympathy  has  he  with  the  people 
who  are  running  up  and  down  trying  to 
do  good  ?  Does  not  the  thought  of  utility 
even  vitiate  his  research  ?  Shall  he  not 
hide  in  his  laboratory  from  the  spirit  of 
the  age  of  service  ?  Yes,  this  is  the  pure 
search  for  truth,  the  passion  for  knowl- 
edge, the  asceticism  of  the  scholar.  And 
82 


yet,  both  the  inspiration  and  the  romance 
of  the  scholar's  hfe  He  in  the  perfect  as- 
surance that  any  truth,  however  remote 
or  isolated,  has  its  part  in  the  unity  of 
the  world  of  truth  and  its  undreamed- 
of appHcability  to  service.  This  is  what 
makes  the  history  of  pure  science  so  full 
of  dramatic  interest  —  that  as  one  traces 
the  new  resources  and  conveniences  and 
securities  of  life  to  their  origins,  he  comes 
upon  some  lonely  student  in  his  labora- 
tory, or  upon  some  series  of  investiga- 
tors dealing  with  abstract  truths,  and  sees 
them,  without  conscious  participation  in 
the  affairs  of  the  world,  becoming  the 
benefactors  of  their  race.  The  unity  of  the 
world  gathers  them,  whether  they  will  or 
no,  into  the  life  of  service ;  and  the  truth 
they  discover  becomes  the  truth  which 
makes  men  free.  It  is  said  of  Faraday  that, 
in  his  investigations  concerning  the  insu- 
lating properties  of  various  materials,  he 
was  asked  of  what  use  such  work  could 
be,  and  answered,  "  Of  what  use  is  a 
baby  ?  "  and  behold,  within  a  generation, 
the  practical  serviceableness  of  his  infant 
discovery  found  undreamed-of  applica- 
tions, and  every  electric  cable  was  wrapped 
in  the  material  which  he  in  his  laboratory 
had  found  best. 

83 


Here  again,  at  the  other  end  of  the  work- 
ing world,  are  the  drudgery,  routine,  and 
mechanical  toil  to  which  many  lives  seem 
altogether  condemned,  and  from  which  no 
life  can  wholly  escape.  This  is  the  service 
which  is  as  far  from  knowledge  as  pure 
science  is  from  service,  —  the  animal  drag 
and  automatic  duties  of  the  daily  tasks. 
How  to  idealize  drudgery,  how  to  dignify 
routine,  how  to  rescue  one's  soul  from 
being  a  mere  cog  in  a  great  machine, — 
that  is  the  cry  of  those  who  are  caught, 
as  which  of  us  is  not,  in  the  incessant 
mechanism  of  the  modern  world.  To  this 
cry  for  a  human  life,  this  demand  for 
a  menschenwurdiges  Dasein,  the  answer  is 
plain.  It  is  not  to  be  reached,  as  many  a 
chafing  spirit  has  fancied,  by  escaping  from 
the  machinery  of  the  world  and  reverting 
to  nature,  simplicity,  and  liberty.  That  is 
the  method  of  the  runaway,  who  would 
save  himself  and  let  the  world  be  lost. 
Nor  may  one  imagine  that  a  change  in 
conditions  will  free  him  from  the  sense  of 
weariness  or  compulsion ;  for  no  social 
class  is  so  overwhelmed  by  ennui,  despond- 
ency, and  mechanism  as  those  who  would 
seem  to  be  most  unconstrained  and  free. 
No,  the  satisfactions  of  life  must  be  ob- 
tained just  where  one  is,  and  the  escape 

84 


from  drudgery  is  discovered  not  by  going 
round  it  but  by  going  through  it. 

Suppose,  however,  that  knowledge  comes 
to  the  rescue  of  service  ;  suppose  that  the 
routine  of  Hfe  is  perceived  to  be  the  es- 
sential machinery  which  harnesses  spiritual 
power;  suppose  that  one  may  look  upon  his 
task  as  an  essential  part  of  the  total  work 
of  the  world ;  detached,  it  may  seem,  like 
the  pure  science  of  the  scholar,  from  all 
appearance  of  utility,  but  held  no  less  in 
the  unity  of  social  service,  —  then  what 
new  dignity  is  given  to  labor,  and  what 
spiritualizing  to  the  mechanism  of  life, 
and  what  significance  is  restored  to  insig- 
nificance, and  what  self-respect  stirs  within 
the  unimportant,  shut-in,  effaced  life  !  One 
starts  up  with  a  happy  surprise  and  says,  I 
am  not  a  machine,  I  am  not  a  wheel,  I  am 
not  a  cog;  I  am  a  living  factor  in  the  creative 
purpose,  an  instrument  of  the  total  plan  ; 
and  fidelity  in  my  own  place  is  the  test  of 
effectiveness  in  the  whole  vast  design.  Thus, 
the  unity  of  the  world,  which  has  democra- 
tized knowledge,  turns  itself  now  to  the 
idealizing  of  service,  and  as  it  saves  some 
men  from  the  conceit  of  wisdom,  so  it  saves 
other  men  from  the  despondency  of  work. 

So  far  we  are  brought,  then,  by  these  cor- 
relations of  knowledge  and  service  toward 

85 


the  new  idealism  which  holds  the  scholar 
and  the  hand-worker  in  the  unity  of  the  new 
world.  But  having  come  thus  far  we  must 
speak  one  final  word;  for  the  conclusion 
we  have  reached  carries  us  in  reality  quite 
beyond  the  region  of  philosophy  and  of 
social  service  into  that  frame  of  mind 
which  marks  the  religious  experience  of 
an  educated  man  ;  and  the  dedication  of 
knowledge  to  service  which  we  have  traced 
reproduces  the  social  ideal  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  Christ. 

Nothing  is  more  striking  in  the  gos- 
pels than  the  balance  of  the  Master's 
mind,  as  he  deals  on  the  one  hand  with 
the  life  of  the  individual,  and  on  the  other 
hand  with  the  truth  of  the  unity  of  the 
world.  First  he  turns  to  the  person  as  the 
instrument  of  his  purpose.  Nothing  is 
so  precious  to  Jesus  as  the  single  soul. 
The  shepherd  seeks  the  one  sheep  ;  the 
woman  searches  for  the  one  coin.  The 
first  discovery  of  Jesus  Christ,  it  has 
been  said,  was  the  discovery  of  the  pre- 
ciousness  of  the  individual.  But  why  is 
the  single  soul  thus  precious  ?  At  once 
the  other  side  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
answers  the  question.  The  individual  is 
precious  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  which 
Jesus  came  to  found.  He  came,  says  the 
86 


first  statement  of  his  purpose,  into  Galilee, 
preaching  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom. 
With  the  vividness  and  completeness  of 
one  to  whom  the  movement  of  history 
was  disclosed,  he  conceived  of  the  scat- 
tered atoms  of  personal  lives  as  wrought 
into  the  organism  of  social  service ;  and 
the  limited  Hebrew  thought  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  expanded  in  his  hands  into 
the  comprehensive  unity  of  the  Christian 
commonwealth.  The  kingdom  was  ever 
the  end,  but  the  person  the  means  to  that 
kingdom.  The  redemption  of  Jesus  was 
not  to  be  of  persons  from  the  world,  but 
of  the  world  through  persons ;  not  an 
escape  from  the  sinking  ship  of  the  world, 
but  a  discipline  fit  to  save  the  whole  ship- 
load of  human  desires  and  needs  and  bring 
it  to  its  destined  port. 

Even  of  himself  Jesus  announces  that 
this  twofold  law  of  life  holds  true.  "  For 
their  sakes,"  he  says,  in  the  greatest  words 
he  ever  uttered,  "  I  sanctify  myself"  "  For 
their  sakes,"  —  that  is  the  principle  of  ser- 
vice; "I  sanctify  myself,"  —  that  is  the  edu- 
cation of  the  individual ;  and  in  the  giving 
of  a  consecrated  individual  for  the  sake  of 
an  unconsecrated  world  the  desire  of  Jesus 
Christ,  even  for  himself,  is  fulfilled. 

What  a  deep,  strengthening  renewal  of 

87 


fidelity,  patience,  and  self-respect  comes  to 
many  a  hesitating,  struggling,  ineffective 
life,  as  it  pauses  thus  among  these  issues 
of  knowledge  and  service  and  hears  the 
message  of  Jesus  binding  together  the  world 
of  study  and  of  work  !  We  do  not  know  just 
how  or  where  the  Master  of  the  world  is  to 
use  the  lives  that  are  consecrated  for  other's 
sakes.  We  may  not  prophesy  when  knowl- 
edge shall  become  service,  or  when  service 
shall  demand  knowledge.  But  this  we  know, 
that  it  is  all  one  world  which  holds  the 
scholar  and  the  worker,  and  that,  both  for 
those  who  study  and  for  those  who  toil, 
religion  is  education  and  education  is  reli- 
gion. We  are  like  those  tapestry  weavers 
of  Paris,  who  do  their  task  at  the  back  of 
the  picture  they  create,  and  see  only  the 
fragments  of  design  which  they  copy  and 
the  tangled  threads  and  loose  ends  which 
they  leave  as  they  go  on,  until  from  time  to 
time  they  rise  from  their  corner  and  pass 
round  to  the  other  side  and  see  the  total 
form  and  color  in  which  their  hands  have 
wrought.  So,  perhaps,  some  day,  in  this 
life  or  in  another,  we  may  be  permitted 
to  rise  from  our  corner  in  the  workroom 
of  life  and  go  round  to  the  other  side  of 
things  and  see  the  total  picture  in  which 
v/e  have  had  our  insignificant  yet  essential 
88 


part ;  and  then  at  last  it  will  be  plain  that 
the  plan  of  the  Great  Designer  is  perfected 
through  the  consecration  of  each  servant  at 
his  task,  and  that  knowledge  and  service 
are  but  the  opposite  sides  of  life,  which 
find  their  unity  in  the  religion  of  an  edu- 
cated man,  

^     OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


89 


MACMILLAN'S 

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This  series  consists  of  thirty-one  books,  each  of 
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THE  GREAT  COMPANION 

By  LYMAN  ABBOTT 

In  the  first  chapter  of  this  companion  volume  to 
"The  Other  Room,"  Dr.  Abbott  says :  « It  is  because 
I  believe  that  God  is  the  Great  Companion,  that  we 
are  not  left  orphans,  that  we  may  have  comradeship 
with  Him,  that  I  have  written  these  pages.  Not  to 
demonstrate  any  truth,  but  to  give  expression  to  a 
living,  inspiring,  dominating  faith." 

As  "  The  Other  Room  "  makes  its  appeal  especially 
to  those  who  are  shadowed  by  bereavement  or  per- 
plexed with  the  mystery  of  death,  so  this  book 
carries  help  and  encouragement  for  those  who  are 
living  in  the  midst  of  life,  and  find  it,  too,  a  mystery. 
It  is  the  product  of  Dr.  Abbott's  ripest  thought,  and 
deals  with  a  theme  that  has  long  been  his  study.  It 
is  a  witness  to  the  immanence  of  God  in  nature  and 
life  and  the  daily  walks  of  men. 


THE  OTHER    ROOM 

By  LYMAN  ABBOTT 

"  Books  which  have  for  their  purpose  to  cheer  the 
heart  of  man  with  the  assurance  of  immortality  and 
to  give  dignity  to  the  life  of  man  by  linking  it  with 
life  eternal,  have  a  perennial  timeliness.  The  eight 
chapters  of  this  little  book  are  studies  in  the  resur- 
rection of  Christ,  the  resurrection  of  man,  and  the 
life  everlasting.  They  are  profoundly  thoughtful; 
even  more  profoundly  spiritual." 

—  Christian  Evangelist. 

"  A  book  which  will  prove  full  of  comfort  to  those 
who  mourn  the  loss  of  dear  friends." 

—  Omaha  World-Herald, 


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ii 


A  Kentucky  Cardinal 

By  JAMES  LANE  ALLEN 

Author  of  "  The  Choir  Invisible,"  "  The  Reign  of  Law," 
"  Summer  in  Arcady,"  etc.,  etc. 

"  A  narrative,  told  with  naive  simplicity  in  the  first 
person,  of  how  a  man  who  was  devoted  to  his  fruits 
and  flowers  and  birds  came  to  fall  in  love  with  a  fair 
neighbor  who  treated  him  at  first  with  whimsical 
raillery  and  coquetry,  and  who  finally  put  his  love  to 
the  supreme  test."  —  New  York  Tribune. 


AFTERMATH 

A  sequel  to  "  A  Kentucky  Cardinal " 

By  JAMES   LANE  ALLEN 

Author  of  "  The   Mettle  of  the  Pasture,"  "  The  Blue 

Grass  Region  of  Kentucky,"  etc.,  etc. 

"The  perfect  simplicity  of  all  the  episodes,  the 
gentleness  of  spirit,  and  the  old-time  courtesy,  the 
poetry  of  it  all,  with  a  gleam  of  humor  on  almost 
every  page."  —  Life, 


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"  The  Flower  of 

England's  Face  '* 

Sketches  of  English    Travel 
By  JULIA  C.  R.  DORR 
CONTENTS 
Chapter  I.  —  A  Week  in  Wales. 
Chapter  II.  —  Banbury  Cakes  and  the  Isle  of  Wight 
Chapter  III.  —  A  Day  of  Contrasts. 
Chapter  IV.  —  In  the  Forest  of  Arden. 
Chapter  V.  —  At  the  Peacock  Inn. 
Chapter  VI.  —  At  Haworth. 
Chapter  VII.  —  From  the  Border  to  Inverness. 
Chapter  VIII.  —  To  Cawdor   Castle  and  CuUoden 

Moor. 
Chapter  IX.  —  An  Enchanted  Day. 


A  Cathedral  Pilgrimage 

By  JULIA  C.  R.  DORR 

"  To  many  minds  both  profound  and  cultured,  to 
many  natures  that  are  both  sensitive  and  apprecia- 
tive, the  English  cathedrals  make  no  special  appeal. 
It  is  largely  a  matter  of  temperament.  There  are 
others  to  whom  they  have  so  much  to  say  that  it  is 
overpowering.  For  them  every  stone  has  a  voice, 
every  aisle  a  message.  The  great,  sombre  towers 
bring  them  strength  and  healing  ;  the  soaring  spires 
lift  them  above  earth  and  its  weariness  into  an  at- 
mosphere where  all  is  space." 

—  From  the  Author's  Preface, 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
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The  Choice  of  Books 

By  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

Author  of  "  The  Meaning  of  History,"  etc.,  etc. 

"  Mr.  Harrison  is  an  able  and  conscientious  critic, 
a  good  logician,  and  a  clever  man  ;  his  faults  are 
superficial,  and  his  book  will  not  fail  to  be  valuable.'' 
—  New  York  Times. 

"  Mr.  Harrison  furnishes  a  valuable  contribution 
to  the  subject.  It  is  full  of  suggestiveness  and 
shrewd  analytical  criticism.  It  contains  the  fruits  of 
wide  reading  and  rich  research." — London  Times, 


HAPPINESS 

Essays  on  the  Meaning  of  Life 

By  CARL  HILTY 

University  of  Bern 

Translated  by  FRANCIS  GREENWOOD  PEABODY 

Plummer  Professor  of  Christian  Morals, 
Harvard  University 

"  The  author  makes  his  appeal  not  to  discussion, 
but  to  life  .  .  .  ;  that  which  draws  readers  to  the 
Bern  professor  is  his  capacity  to  maintain  in  the 
midst  of  important  duties  of  public  service  and 
scientific  activity  an  unusual  detachment  of  desire 
and  an  interior  quietness  of  mind." 

—  New  York  Times, 


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THE  PLEASURES  OF  LIFE 

By  the  Right  Hon.  Sir  JOHN  LUBBOCK 

(Lord  Avebury) 

Author  of  "  The  Use  of  Life,"  "  The  Beauties  of  Nature," 

etc.,  etc. 

CONTENTS 
Part  I 

Chapter  I.— The  Duty  of  Happiness.  Chapter 
II. — The  Happiness  of  Duty.  CHAPTER  III.  —  A 
Song  of  Books.  CHAPTER  IV.  —  The  Choice  of  Books. 
Chapter  V.  —  The  Blessing  of  Friends,  Chapter 
VI.  — The  Value  of  Time.  Chapter  VII.  — The 
Pleasures  of  Travel.  CHAPTER  VIII.  —  The  Pleasures 
of  Home.  CHAPTER  IX. —  Science.  Chapter  X.— 
Education. 

Part  II 

Chapter  I.  — Ambition.  Chapter  II.  —  Wealth. 
Chapter  III.  — Health.  Chapter  IV.  —  Love. 
Chapter  V.  —  Art.  Chapter  VI.  —  Poetry.  Chap- 
ter VII.— Music.  Chapter  VIII.  — The  Beauties 
of  Nature,  CHAPTER  IX.  — The  Troubles  of  Life. 
Chapter  X.  — Labour  and  Rest.  Chapter  XI. — 
Religion.  CHAPTER  XII.  —  The  Hope  of  Progress. 
Chapter  XIII.  —  The  Destiny  of  Man. 


PARABLES   OF  LIFE 

By  HAMILTON  WRIGHT  MABIE 

Author  of  "  Backgrounds  of  Literature,"    "  William   Shake- 
speare :  Poet,  Dramatist,  and  Man,"  etc. 

Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke  says:  "Poetic  in  conception, 
vivid  and  true  in  imagery,  delicately  clear  and  beautiful 
in  diction,  these  little  pieces  belong  to  Mr.  Mabie's  finest 
and  strongest  work.  To  read  them  is  to  feel  one's  heart 
calmed,  uplifted,  and  enlarged." 


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BIBLICAL   IDYLS 

Edited,  with  an  Introduction  and  Notes,  by 

RICHARD  G.  MOULTON,  M.A.  (Camb.),Ph.D.  (Pa.) 

Professor  of  Literature  in  English  in  the  University 

of  Chicago 

"  It  must  be  that  this  natural  and  rational  arrange- 
ment of  the  different  styles  of  literature  in  the  Bible 
will  commend  the  book  itself  to  people  who  have 
hithrirto  neglectod  it,  and  give  to  those  who  have 
read  it  and  studied  it  with  the  greatest  diligence, 
new  satisfaction  and  delight.  I  sincerely  wish  for 
the  enterprise  a  constantly  increasing  success." 
John  H.  Vincent, 

Chancellor  of  the  Chautauqua 

Literary  and  Scientific  Circle. 


SELECT    MASTERPIECES 
OF   BIBLICAL  LITERATURE 

Edited,  with  an  Introduction  and  Notes,  by 

RICHARD  G.  MOULTON,  M.A.  (Camb.),Ph.D.  (Pa.) 

Editor  of  "  The  Modern  Reader's  Bible,"  etc. 

"Unquestionably  here  is  a  task  worth  carrying 
out  ;  and  it  is  to  be  said  at  once  that  Dr.  Moulton 
has  carried  it  out  with  great  skill  and  helpfulness. 
Both  the  introduction  and  the  notes  are  distinct  con- 
tributions to  the  better  understanding  and  higher 
appreciation  of  the  literary  character,  features,  and 
beauties  of  the  Biblical  books  treated." 

—  Presbyterian  and  Keformed  Review, 


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The  Psalms  and  Lamentations 

Edited,  with  an  Introduction  and  Notes,  by 

RICHARD  G.  MOULTON,  M.A.  (Camb.),Ph.D.  (Pa.) 

Editor  of  "  The  Modern  Reader's  Bible,"  etc. 

"The  effect  of  these  changes  back  to  the  original 
forms  under  which  the  sacred  writings  first  appeared 
will  be,  for  the  vast  majority  of  readers,  a  surprise  and 
delight  ;  they  will  feel  as  if  they  had  come  upon  new 
spiritual  and  intellectual  treasures,  and  they  will  appre- 
ciate for  the  first  time  how  much  the  Bible  has  suffered 
from  the  hands  of  those  who  have  treated  it  without 
reference  to  its  literary  quality.  In  view  of  the  signifi- 
cance and  possible  results  of  Professor  Moulton's  under- 
taking, it  is  not  too  much  to  pronounce  it  one  of  the 
most  important  spiritual  and  literary  events  of  the  times. 
It  is  part  of  the  renaissance  of  Biblical  study  ;  but  it 
may  mean,  and  in  our  judgment  it  does  mean,  the 
renewal  of  a  fresh  and  deep  impression  of  the  beauty 
and  power  of  the  supreme  spiritual  writing  of  the  world." 
—  Ike  Outlook,  New  York, 


THE  MAKERS  OF  FLORENCE 

By  Mrs.  OLIPHANT 

Author  of  "  The  Makers  of  Modem  Rome,"  "  The 

Makers  of  Venice,"  etc.,  etc. 

Volume  I.  —  Dante  —  The  Cathedral  Builders. 
Volume  II. — Savonarola  —  The  Piagnoni  Painters. 

"  The  studies  of  character  are  lifelike  and  fair,  and  the 
narrative  portions  are  full  of  picturesque  touches.  .  .  . 
The  book  is  beautifully  illustrated  with  woodcuts  after 
drawings  of  Florentine  buildings,  statues,  and  paintings." 

—  TAe  AthencBum. 


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The  Golden  Treasury 

Selected   from    the    best  songs  and  lyrical 

poems  in  the  English  language  and 

arranged  with  notes 

BY 

FRANCIS  T.  PALGRAVE 

Late  Professor  of  Poetry  in  the  University  of  Oxford 

Revised  and  Enlargfed 

"  This  little  collection  differs,  it  is  believed,  from 
others  in  the  attempt  made  to  include  in  it  all  the 
best  original  lyrical  pieces  and  songs  in  our  language 
(save  a  very  few  regretfully  omitted  on  account  of 
length)  by  writers  not  living,  and  none  besides  the 
best." 


The  Golden  Treasury 

SECOND    SERIES 

Selected   from   the   best   songs    and   lyrical 

poems  in  the  English  language  and 

arranged  with   notes 

BY 

FRANCIS  T.  PALGRAVE 

Late  Professor  of  Poetry  in  the  University  of  Oxford 

Revised  and  Enlarg:ed 


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A  Trip  to  England 

By  GOLDWIN   SMITH 

Author  of  "  The  United  Kingdom,"  "  The  United 
States,"  etc. 

"  A  delightful  little  work,  telling  in  a  most  charm- 
ingly rambling  yet  systematic  way  what  is  to  be  seen 
of  interest  in  England."  —  Chicago  Times, 

"The  book  makes  an  entertaining  and  useful 
companion  for  travellers  in  England." 

—  Boston  Herald, 


Oxford  and  her  Colleges 

A  View  from  the  Eadcliffe  Library 

By  GOLDWIN   SMITH 

"  The  writer  has  seldom  enjoyed  himself  more 
than  in  showing  an  American  friend  over  Oxford. 
He  has  felt  something  of  the  same  enjoyment  in 
preparing,  with  the  hope  of  interesting  some  Ameri- 
can visitors,  this  outline  of  the  history  of  the  Uni- 
versity and  her  colleges." 

—  From  the  Author'' s  Preface. 


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The  Religion  of  an 

Educated  Man 

THREE  LECTURES 
By  FRANCIS   GREENWOOD  PEABODY 

Plummer  Professor  of  Christian  Morals, 
Harvard  University 

Author  of  "Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question," 
"Jesus  Christ  and  the  Christian  Character,"  etc. 

"They  are  pregnant  with  suggestion  and  reveal  a 
depth  of  broad  Christian  scholarship  together  with  a 
keen  insight  into  the  demands  of  the  modern  world 
on  the  scholar."  —  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser . 

"  His  logic  is  sound,  and  the  sane,  temperate  tone 
of  his  essays  invites  conviction." 

—  Milwaukee  Sentinel. 


The  Maxims  and  Reflections 
of  Goethe 

With  Aphorisms   on    Science   selected    by   the  late 

Professor  Huxley,  and  on  Art  by  the  late 

Lord  Leighton 

TRANSLATED   BY 

THOMAS   BAILEY   SAUNDERS,  M.A. 


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X 


BROWN  HEATH 

AND  BLUE  BELLS 

Being  Sketches  of  Scotland,  with  other 

Papers 

By  WILLIAM   WINTER 

"  A  set  of  '  Tributes '  to  literary  and  artistic  people. 
The  main  purpose  of  the  compilation  is  to  express  the 
charm  of  Scottish  scenes  and  to  stimulate  the  desire  for 
travel  in  storied  regions." 

—  Philadelphia  Evening  Telegraph. 

"  Handled  witVi  exquisite  grace,  with  gentlemanly 
reticence,  with  humanly  beautiful  tenderness.  .  .  .  He 
is  a  sympathetic  traveller.  He  records  his  impressions 
in  delicate,  fascinating,  well-mannered  prose,  or  in  verse 
which  is  equally  well  bred,  equally  impeccable.  It  is  a 
book  which  reflects  the  poetry  of  Scotland,  and  the 
humanity  of  an  instructed  man  of  letters." 

—  Commercial  Advertiser, 


GRAY  DAYS  AND  GOLD 

IN  ENGLAND  AND  SCOTLAND 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"  Mr.  Winter's  graceful  and  meditative  style  in  his 
English  sketches  has  recommended  his  earlier  volume 
upon  (Shakespeare's)  England  to  many  readers,  who 
will  not  need  urging  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  this 
companion  book,  in  which  the  traveller  guides  us 
through  the  quiet  and  romantic  scenery  of  the  mother 
country  with  a  mingled  affection  and  sentiment  of  which 
we  have  had  no  example  since  Irving's  day." 

—  The  Nation. 


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LIFE  AND  ART  OF 

EDWIN  BOOTH 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"It  is  a  wholly  successful  piece  of  biographical 
writing,  and  a  worthy  picture  of  the  beautiful  char- 
acter of  one  of  the  Americans   concerning  whose 
right  to  be  called  a  genius  there  will  be  no  dispute." 
—  Philadelphia  Inquirer, 

**  At  once  tender  and  reverent,  written  with  the 
grace,  fervor,  and  beauty  of  diction  which  character- 
ize this  critic's  work.  It  is  a  fascinating  and  able 
book."  —  Hartford  CouranL 


OLD  SHRINES  AND  IVY 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"  Whatever  William  Winter  writes  is  marked  by 
felicity  of  diction  and  by  refinement  of  style,  as  well 
as  by  the  evidence  of  culture  and  wide  reading. 
*  Old  Shrines  and  Ivy  *  is  an  excellent  example  of  the 
charm  of  his  work."  —  Boston  Courier. 


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Shadows   of  the  Stage 

FIRST  SERIES 
By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"There  is  in  these  writings  the  same  charm  of 
style,  poetic  glamour,  and  flavor  of  personality  which 
distinguishes  whatever  comes  to  us  from  Mr.  Win- 
ter's pen,  and  M'hich  makes  them  unique  in  our 
literature."  —  New  York  Home  Journal, 


Shadows   of   the  Stage 

SECOND  SERIES 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"  Mr.  Winter  has  long  been  known  as  the  fore- 
most of  American  dramatic  critics,  as  a  writer  of  very 
charming  verse,  and  as  a  master  in  the  lighter  veins 
of  English  prose." —  Chicago  Herald. 


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64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 
xiv 


Shadows   of   the   Stage 

THIRD    SERIES 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"  He  has  the  poise  and  sure  judgment  of  long  experi- 
ence, the  fine  perception  and  cultured  mind  of  a  littira^ 
teur  and  man  of  the  world,  and  a  command  of  vivid  and 
flexible  language  quite  his  own.  One  must  look  far  for 
anything  approaching  it  in  the  way  of  dramatic  criti- 
cism ;  only  Lamb  could  write  more  delightfully  of  actors 
and  acting.  ...  Mr.  Winter  is  possessed  of  that  quality 
invaluable  to  a  play-goer,  a  temperament  finely  recep- 
tive, sensitive  to  excellence ;  and  this  it  is  largely  which 
gives  his  dramatic  writings  their  value.  Criticism  so 
luminous,  kindly,  genial,  sympathetic,  and  delicately 
expressed  fulfils  its  function  to  the  utmost." 

—  Milwaukee  Sentinel, 


Shakespeare's     England 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER 

"  He  offers  something  more  than  guidance  to  the 
American  traveller.  He  is  a  convincing  and  eloquent 
interpreter  of  the  august  memories  and  venerable  sanc- 
tities of  the  old  country."  —  Saturday  Review, 

"The  book  is  delightful  reading." 

—  Scribner's  Monthly. 

"  Enthusiastic  and  yet  keenly  critical  notes  and  com- 
ments on  Elnglish  life  and  scenery."  —  Scotsman. 


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AMIEL'S   JOURNAL 

The  Journal  Intime  of  Henri-Frederic  Amiel 
Translated^  with  an  Introdtution  and  Notes 

By  Mrs.  HUMPHRY  WARD 

Author  of  "  The  History  of  David  Grieve,"  etc.,  etc 

"A  wealth  of  thought  and  a  power  of  expression 
which  would  make  the  fortune  of  a  dozen  less  able 
works."  —  Churchman. 

"  A  work  of  wonderful  beauty,  depth,  and  charm.  .  .  . 
Will  stand  beside  such  confessions  as  St.  Augustine's 
and  Pascal's.  ...  It  is  a  book  to  converse  with  again 
and  again ;  fit  to  stand  among  the  choicest  volumes  that 
we  esteem  as  friends  of  our  souls."  —  Christian  Register. 


The  Friendship  of  Nature 

A  New  England  Chronicle  of  Birds  and  Flowers 

By  MABEL  OSGOOD   WRIGHT 

Author  of  " Birdcraft,"  "Tommy  Anne  and  the  Three 
Hearts,"  etc.,  etc. 

"A  charming  chronicle  it  is,  abounding  in  excellent 
descriptions  and  interesting  comment." 

—  Chicago  Evening  Journal. 
"  The  author  sees  and  vividly  describes  what  she  sees. 
But  more,  she  has  rare  insight  and  sees  deeply,  and  the 
most  precious  things  lie  deep." 

—  Boston  Daily  Advertiser. 


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xvi 


OF  THE    ^ 

l^NIVERSITY 

OF 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 


Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


JAN  30    1948 


^AW5     3355 


LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


YB  29486 


